


The Anatomy of Change

by vinylcherry



Category: NCT (Band), WAYV
Genre: Angst, Cockblocked By Circumstance, Domestic Fluff, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, Food Metaphors, Getting Back Together, M/M, Single Dad Kun, Slow Burn, day 3: distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:48:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22528855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinylcherry/pseuds/vinylcherry
Summary: There's no way of telling the future or knowing what comes next. But right here - hand in hand and side by side - everything is perfect. So Kun stops, blinks, carves the moment into his memory and sets it gently to the side with all the rest. Ten glances at him then, and he smiles, and Kun knows that by the end of the summer he will either fall in love again or lose everything.Or:Kun and Ten meet at three points in their life, but circumstance always seems to pull them apart. Will this time be any different?
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun
Comments: 69
Kudos: 284
Collections: In Every Lifetime: A KunTen Fan Week





	The Anatomy of Change

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to everyone who encouraged this fic along the way, i really would not have finished it without the support. 
> 
> extra special thanks to @kuntenyang on twt who helped me with the Chinese linguistics side of this and came up with the original character’s name, and the meanings behind that. 
> 
> now, the table is set. bon appétit!

**  
I.  
**  
Kun traces his hand along the rough texture of the wooden railing; feels the warmth against his fingertips, and the unevenness where it has begun to peel off. 

When he turns his palm upwards again, dry bits of white paint stick to his skin. God, it’s due for a repaint. Looking around the veranda, Kun sighs. It was going to be hot all weekend and he would rather not be out here working himself to death through a heat stroke. Even just standing under the sun for a minute has Kun feeling sweaty underneath his clothes. The oppressive heat fans across his face in the wind, and it feels like something suspended in the air; a tension waiting to be released.

No, repainting would have to wait.

The curtains sway in the breeze when Kun steps through the door and back into the kitchen. Luckily it’s less humid inside, thanks to the air conditioning and the canopy above the veranda protecting the room in its shadow. Even though he needed to cut the grass, oil the deck, and do a whole bunch of other things which he’d probably forgotten about, the kitchen was always neat and tidy. Today especially.

The renovation a couple years ago had been a nightmare. But this was the heart of the house, and Kun never regretted it despite the blow it took on their bank account. Beyond the door to the garden, a couch and some recliners huddle up in the corner. Dark shelves line the walls, holding framed family photos and pots of devil's ivy, whose glossy vines spill over the edge and down the wallpaper. 

Stepping around some toys scattered on the floor and past the kid’s craft table pushed up against the wall, Kun crosses the room. To the right, it tapers off into a corridor leading down the entrance hallway, and to the stairs to the upper floor. Straight ahead however, the room opens up into a bright and spacious kitchen - and this is where Kun feels most at home.

The pleasant smell of spices floats in the air like so often. The long dinner table is set already and a number of plates and bowls decorate it, overflowing with food, but the chairs are empty still. They should be here any minute now, Kun thinks to himself, in fact they should have been here every minute of the past hour.

Today was a big day. His editor had landed him a huge interview for his debut cookbook, through a personal contact with someone working at the well regarded culinary magazine in question. Kun eyes the stack of books on the living room table. It was only a test run of his current draft, but the final deadline was nearing. The book felt like the lovechild of all his life's experience as a person - from his first taste of food to now - and finally getting to share the finished product was a daunting thing. Kun nervously runs a hand through his hair. Whether it would be interesting enough for such an esteemed magazine or its readers, he doesn’t know.

What time is it? Kun glances at his wristwatch. 3 p.m.

Sighing, he returns to the center piece kitchen island just as the doorbell rings. He startles, but takes a deep breath and straightens his twice ironed shirt to make sure sure he looks suitably professional, before hurrying to the entrance.

When Kun opens the door, he is greeted by an outrageously tall man who waves his hands at him in some kind of apologetic jazz hands display. The man is wearing a denim jacket and carrying heavy camera equipment over his shoulder.

‘Heey, I’m so sorry that we’re late, traffic was _crazy,_ you know how it is. I’m Johnny, by the way. We spoke via email.’ He reaches forward to shake Kun’s hand with a gummy smile.

‘Right, right, Johnny. Hi.’ There were so many emails and phone calls, it was hard to keep track of all the names. ‘Please, come in. And don’t worry about the time, it’s no problem,’ Kun smiles politely, as if he hadn’t spent the hour worried out of his mind that he’d somehow misunderstood the scheduling.

Johnny shrugs off his jacket and hangs it up on a hook mounted on the wall. ‘Well,’ he exhales. ‘Actually, it kind of is a problem. We have to be somewhere else right after this, so…we need to speed this up as best we can. Again, sorry. Traffic.’

'You said we?’ Kun frowns.

‘Yeah, my coworker is outside, he’s just parking the car.’ Johnny puts a big hand on Kun’s shoulder, ushering him into the kitchen. ‘Why don't we get started?’

Kun allows himself be lead forward. He shows him around the kitchen, explaining the dishes on the table and what’s cooking on the stove. Meanwhile, Johnny listens attentively, asking questions here and there with an amicable warmth. Sitting down by the table, he starts the recorder. As an interviewer, Johnny is relaxed and encouraging; prompting Kun to speak on particular sensitive topics in a way than only a people person with a good eye for what makes people into people can do. However, they only get through a couple questions before the door sounds again, opening and then closing shut once more.

'Ah, that must be him, great.' Johnny cranes his head toward the hallway before turning back to Kun with smile. 'So, like I said, when perfecting a recipe, do you ever get tired of having to eat the same food over and over again?'

'No, not really,' Kun says. 'That's just part of the process of what makes it good. For example, in my book I talk about…'

Kun trails off when the other man walks into the room. He's carrying similar camera equipment as Johnny had, but it looks way heavier against his small frame. Dressed in a silky oversized shirt in some reddish bohemian print, dark dress pants and a thin leather belt around his delicate waist, his striking appearance catches Kun's eye in a split second. The man's mere presence seems to light up the room, like a fresh wind or a beautiful tchotchke. His black hair falls past his shoulders, sleek and shiny, and a row of gold earrings dangle from his ears. Though the man's face is obscured by a pair of sunglasses, Kun feels strangely drawn to him.

'Hey, so sorry that we're late,' he says while making a beeline for the table to put down the things. 'Ugh, traffic! I swear if people just kept driving there would be no jams.’ 

Kun frowns at the sound of the voice.

'He'll take your pictures today,' Johnny informs him, jumping into the conversation again. 'Of the kitchen, the food, and a couple portraits if we have time.'

Photographer guy quickly starts assembling the camera stands and lenses, face pointed down and away. Then he stands upright, hoists up the readied camera with one hand and pushes his sunglasses up on his head with the other.

Johnny clicks on the recorder again. 'Oh, I should introduce you two.’ He nods over his shoulder at the beautiful man behind him. ‘This is Ten.’

Eyes meeting across the room, the world spins to a halt.

‘Yeah,' Kun laughs incredulously. 'I think we know each other.’

The interview goes smoothly, for the most part. Kun dances around the kitchen while adding more plates to the table, and feels his shoulders relax now that he’s in his element. Eyes fixed on Johnny or on the edge of the kitchen knife in his hands, Kun answers to questions about his book and journey as a chef, from when he began working at the family restaurant as a teenager to now as a small restaurant owner himself.

’And who’s your biggest inspiration, would you say?' Johnny squints thoughtfully.

'My family was definitely what sparked my interest in food, but my mother especially. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for her, that's for sure,' Kun smiles lightly, and something shudders inside his chest; twitching unnaturally in the space right below his heart, where there should be nothing at all. 

'Mm, mothers. We’d do anything for them. Tell me, what's a typical day like in the life of Qian Kun?' 

'Well, I'm on holiday leave right now, though normally I spend most of my day at the the restaurant. I've recently moved to a purely administrative position, which means I can chose to work from home as well. That way I can spend more time with my daughter, which is amazing.'

Ten chokes on his drink, water spurting down his chin.

Johnny whips around in his seat to frown at Ten with a perplexed expression on his face. 'I…what? You good? Jesus christ,' he mumbles, before returning his attention to Kun.

If Johnny picks up on the tension in the room, he doesn't comment on it.

Kun explains that he spends the rest of his days cooking, writing, and caring for his five year old daughter, Cheng. That he tries to jog every morning to keep his body in shape, since he spends so much time taste testing his own recipes or down at the restaurant. Johnny makes some humorous quip about workouts at that, which is probably meant to be relatable, but Kun is only half listening. 

He does his very best to pretend the camera isn't there; that it isn't really Ten standing behind it. But it’s difficult when Ten's movement stiffens behind the huge lens, in the periphery of Kun’s vision. He doesn't dare look at him directly - only sneaking side glances whenever Johnny and Ten taste another new dish put upon the table from the heat of the oven, catching Ten's reaction in the reflection of the windows. Licking his lips, Ten eats heartily despite whatever his own feelings may be. It's only a grain of relief, but it's something.

The business degree must have helped with managing the restaurant when Kun first moved to the U.S., Johnny prompts him, and Kun nods, hesitantly telling the story of how he had settled with his partner, and Ten doesn't choke on any more water that time.

At the end of the hour and too many portions later, Johnny clasps his hands together. 'Alright, the final and most important question. Favourite root vegetable?' 

'Beets?' Ten snorts sarcastically.

Kun scratches his head. 'Actually, yeah.'

Johnny's eyebrows knit together in another baffled expression as he glances between them. Then he exhales loudly and shakes his head. 'You know what, I'm not even going to ask.’ Rising to his feet, he consciously bumps against Ten with his elbow when he walks around the table to shake Kun's hands. 'Kun, it was great meeting you. We want to publish the interview as soon as you get a publish date on the book from your team, so let us now, alright?’

Shaking Johnny's big hands, Kun nods and hopes his own palms aren’t actually as sweaty as they feel. ‘Yeah, we’re aiming at September. Late summer, anyway.’

'Perfect, we’ll hear from you then.’ He walks him to the front door, and Johnny grabs his jacket, waving his hand. ‘Take care!'

The sound of metal rubbing against metal comes closer when Ten lumbers the camera equipment back out again. Kun inhales sharply when Ten pauses in front of him. Suddenly alone, the air seems to shift around them. Hands buried in the pockets of his jeans, Kun doesn't say anything, because what is there to say?

Ten opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He bites his lip and tries again. 'I'm...happy to see you, Kun,' is all Ten says.

_Happy?_

'Oh,' Kun frowns. Oh.

'It's good to see that you've done well for yourself. That's good.’

'Yeah, yeah. You too.'

In a moment of bravery, Kun dares to look up from the hallway carpet. When he does, the sight of Ten so up close makes Kun’s heart clench down painfully inside his chest - from the familiar slant of his feline eyes, to the sharpness of his nose, his dainty lips and the rounded curve of his ear lobes, soft beneath the jewellery there - and it all takes Kun’s breath away.

Ten visibly swallows, then tilts his head to see if Johnny's started the car yet. 'I, uh...I have to go. But if you have a question about the interview or want to check on the progress, you can contact us. Here.' 

Out of the chest pocket of his v-necked shirt, Ten pulls out a black business card with a floral design around the edges. It's matte under the pads of Kun's fingers when he takes it. Flipping it over, he reads the company name and some phone numbers. 

'Thanks, I'll keep it.'

Ten gives him a small smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes.

They part without saying another word, but it feels like an apology rooted in the silence on both ends.

Kun watches him leave down the street to where they parked. Johnny waves him goodbye for a third time, so Kun has to raise his hand in response. The last thing he sees is Ten's long hair blowing in the wind - dark, glossy and probably warm to the touch in the sunny weather - and the crown of Ten’s head when he steps into the car, disappearing from view.

Later that night, Kun sits down at the side of the bed. Now the house breathes easy, quiet and cool under the blue light of the moon coming through the blinds. The electronic toothbrush buzzes on, its vibrations filling the still room with something. 

While he brushes his teeth, Kun flips the dark business card around in his other hand for the hundredth time, reading the small print letters on the other side and the name below the phone number:

_Ten._

The jingle of a bell announces their arrival when Kun pulls on the door to the tiny cafe at the corner of the street. Quietly tucked away in one of the artsy neighbourhoods, the white painted front of the cafe stood out beside the dingy bookshop on its side, and the apartments stacked on top.

Kun has never been before. He always felt a little out of place in these kinds of establishments. Art galleries. Fancy coffee shops. That kind of thing. (Or like the one time Kun’s coworker invited him to an interactive art exhibition, and Kun was the only one not wearing black at the after party, despite there not having been any dress code). 

He was never one to call himself a creative, despite his imaginative side spilling out in other ways in the kitchen. There, he can breathe a little easier. Colours and scents stand out brighter, and he can see it all before him; fresh tones of cilantro peeking out from the stable ochre-tinted notes of a curry underneath. But being surrounded by too many polo top-wearing college students seems to heighten the same unease that he feels in those places. 

And still, the rounded scent of good, ground coffee reaches Kun's nose the moment he steps in; immediately stripping him of his barricades.

‘Hiya,’ calls a girl cheerily from the counter. Her ponytail bounces when she pokes her head out from a display of artisan cheesecakes. ‘What can I get you?’

‘Oh, I’m just here to see someone,’ Kun smiles politely. ‘Is it okay if I head in?’

‘Of course,’ she beams, and points to a narrow corridor that broadens into another sitting room on the other side. ‘Head on in. Bathroom is on your right. But there’s no, uh, changing table in the men’s restroom.’

‘That’s alright, thanks.’ Kun nods and does his best not to make the waitress more embarrassed when her face flushes. 

Like he’s not used to these things. Cheng may have outgrown the diaper period, but public restrooms are still a little awkward. On most days, she’s bright and chatty, but that’s with him and the kindergarten teachers. It took a long time to work up her courage to go to the ladies' by herself, but eventually the habit settled in.

'Baba?' Cheng tugs on the sleeve of Kun's jacket. 'What's his name?'

Kun smiles fondly at her and squats down. They'd already been over this twice this morning, but adult information rarely seemed important enough to stick in her mind for too long. 'His name is Ten,' Kun explains patiently. 'We're meeting him because he used to be a friend of Baba a long time ago. Is that okay?'

Cheng smiles mischievously and fiddles with Kun's fingers. 'Yes,' she nods, looking extra cute today in her pigtails and yellow dungarees.

'Okay, good. And we packed your crayons, so you've got something to do.'

He stands up again and leads her by the hand through the corridor to the other sitting room. Wide windows line the wall opposite, casting bright light everywhere. The orange wallpaper reflects a warm hue all around. Kun looks around the seated tables, and in the back corner, he finds what he's looking for. 

Half-hidden behind a tall, potted Areca palm, sits Ten.

Ten is hunched over and is squinting down at the iPad balanced on the table in front of him. He's wearing another silky shirt; the pecan coloured fabric hanging loosely off his shoulders, beautiful against the warmth of his skin tone. The rounded glasses perched on his nose have slid down a bit in his concentration. Fast fingers tap away at the folded out keyboard underneath, in what Kun supposes might be a work email. Walking up, Ten doesn't notice them until Kun stands right in front of him and waves a hand in his field of vision. 

'Hi there,' Kun greets him.

'Oh shit,' Ten twitches, standing up hurriedly, and his iPad nearly falls over when he bumps against the corner of the table. 'Sorry, I didn't see you come in,' he laughs flusteredly and pulls Kun in for a quick hug over the table, slapping his hand formally against Kun's shoulder. Kun frowns at the sudden gesture, but has no time to think before Ten lets go of him and turns to Cheng instead.

'Oh my god, _hello_ there. I'm Ten, what's your name?' Ten's eyes twinkle when he looks at her, a stunned smile on his face.

Kun chuckles and lets Cheng hide her face in his stomach when she chooses not to answer. ‘She’s a little shy,' Kun explains and motions for Ten to sit down again. 'But that's okay too, right? We're all a little shy sometimes.' He drags another chair over from a nearby table, and lets Cheng sit down next to him.

'Let's get you something to drink,’ says Ten, pulling a hand through his hair which makes his golden earrings dangle like windchimes. ‘I can go order for you guys. I've got a discount card at this place, anyway.'

'Oh, right. I'll just come with you,' Kun says, rising to his feet. He opens the zipper on Cheng's backpack hanging from the shoulders of the chair, and takes out the pack of crayons and a notebook. 'Here, sweetie. I'll be back soon.'

They walk to the front desk together. Kun eyes the wide selection of cakes and sandwiches. Although a cook by profession and a snob by heart, his sweet tooth is inescapable wherever he goes.

'So,' says Ten, stood waiting at Kun's side with his hands in the pockets of his well-fitted dress pants. 'A kid.'

Kun looks up at him, and back at the whipped cream delicacies. 'Hm? You knew that already.'

Ten smacks his tongue; both his body language and tone of voice more relaxed now out of sight from Cheng, a bit more teasing, like the Ten that Kun knew once. 'Yeah, but it's different seeing you in action like this. With your…colour books and napkins. I mean, it's cute, but it's just strange to see, I guess.'

'Yeah, well, things change.'

‘Do they?’ Ten hums.

Kun straightens up from the display case. 'Cheng can eat the cheese and onion pie, plus some apple juice,' he concludes. 'And I'll have the orange chocolate cake.'

Ten walks over to the counter and rings the bell, and the waitress hurries back from the back room. He repeats Kun's order with a pleasant smile, offering a comment or two about the stack of pamphlets on the counter - perhaps another art show for people more sophisticated than Kun; people like Ten.

'And I'll have an iced coffee, thanks. What do you want?' Ten asks - half turned away but glancing back at Kun over his shoulder - and it feels like a question about more than coffee. ‘Let me guess, a tall macchiato with three shots?’

‘That would be nice, yeah,’ Kun nods, and finds himself smiling a little nervously at both Ten and the waitress.

Ten gives him a curious look. ‘All these years and you’re still the same.’

Kun isn’t sure if that’s supposed to be a good or a bad thing.

He thinks of Cheng in the other room - her little feet dangling from the chair - and of long nights spent taking care of her that winter when she had the flu, Kun thinks of losing sleep between managing the restaurant and writing his book, of the big loan he had to take out to keep the house, of divorce papers and lawyer meetings and the empty side of a bed at night.

And Kun doesn’t feel the same.

A couple years ago, this whole situation might have felt very different. But Kun isn't the same as he was then. He's got Cheng now, which means way more than just another mouth to feed. It's been a tumultuous lifestyle change - one that he would never wish to change from - but a tumultuous one nonetheless.

Finally seated at the table again after having carried back the food and drinks on a tray, they settle in, and Kun notices a strange feeling in his stomach. Maybe it’s the itchy collar of his button-up shirt, which suddenly feels a size too small. Maybe it's noticing the average age of the other people in the cafe. Maybe it's Ten, who doesn't look a day older and seems to be living the same artistic bachelor's life as way back when; at ease and unbothered by serious things.

So Kun can't help it when he notices the waitress' eyes shift between Ten's bright smile and him in the back - because Kun knows what she's thinking, and in all honesty, he’s wondering about the exact same thing.

But it's not a date. Kun knows this. Emphasised it, even, by text and then later on the phone. 

Besides, even if it were, Kun wouldn't know how to go through the motions of that. He can't even remember the last first date he was on. It must have been before the end of his last relationship, because he hasn't put himself out after that. Just hasn't felt right. Not to Cheng, and not to him. Do people their age even go on dates like this? Kun pushes a hand through his hair with a groan when he realises that he really is one of those people now. Old people. 

And again, it's not a date.

Kun had just wanted a chance to catch up with Ten, outside the stressful atmosphere of the interview. After all, Ten is still an important person to him, regardless of the circumstances and what feels like a standoffish tension in the air. Or perhaps that’s just being an adult - the stale politeness of it all - but Kun isn’t sure of that either. 

Ten finishes his monologue about what the pamphlets had been advertising. (It was a local charity event - not just some some art student's thesis.) Taking a sip of his iced coffee, Ten squints at him from across the table, saying nothing for a moment.

'Anyway, what have you been up to these past years?'

Kun exhales, shrugging a little. 'I don't know,' he laughs. 'Lots of things. Too many.'

'Oh yeah? The house was nice,' Ten comments distractedly while fidgeting with a napkin on the table. 'Sounds like you're very busy with the restaurant and the book. And your family.'

‘Right. Keeping busy,' Kun hums. 'Mostly it's just the work, but even with that I try to keep a positive mindset by reminding myself that I love what I do, so it's not really work. And family is family. She's great, you know.' Kun sighs and strokes the back of Cheng's head beside him, but she doesn't notice - just keeps on drawing splotchy trees.

Ten smiles watching the two of them, something somber passing between his eyes.

Kun clears his throat. 'What about you? It's weird, I'm surprised we haven't bumped into each other earlier.'

'Oh, I actually only just moved here like two months ago,' says Ten. 'Our magazine's main office relocated down from Chicago, so me and couple others were handpicked to go, and here I am. Haven't even unpacked most of my stuff, to be honest. This place keeps me warm and fed, though.’ Ten looks around the room. 'Did you know they put a portion of their profits to helping rescue dogs?'

Kun smiles. 'No, I didn't. Must be warmer down here for you though, right? I heard it's gonna be a record hot summer this year. Hope you packed some swim trunks.’

'That's just global warming,' Ten counters. 'They say that every year.'

Kun takes a sip of his coffee, and hums in agreement. It probably is.

They soon fall into an easier rhythm. Ten seems to drop some of that out of place politeness, and speaks a little easier of personal things. Kun learns a couple new things - like how Ten came to pursue his postgraduate education in the US like he had always dreamed of, and that he managed to stay through the success of his art and the company that vouched for him. From the sound of it, Johnny seemed to have had a special hand in that, but knowing Ten, his hard work spoke for itself.

Kun feels a surge of pride swell in his heart upon hearing it, because Ten has always had an eye for all things beautiful. Between photography, visual art and poetry, Ten saw things that others rarely noticed. He could pull and stretch on words like a glutinous dough, tearing them apart and putting them back together into something different but pleasing. At one point, he even put the pen to the paper for Kun's sake.

Besides work, Kun learns of other things. Ten explains that he’s happy that he gets to travel a lot through his job, seeing new places and meeting interesting people. Kun gladly lets Ten lead the conversation between photography techniques, food and other small talk. And as Ten speaks - making some snide, perceptive comment about cultural differences between here and home-home - Kun notices new details in Ten that he hasn't seen before.

There's the obvious things, like how his hair has grown long over the years. Today it's tied back in a messy knot, but Kun still catches the way Ten's hand moves to tuck a non-existent strand behind his ear every so often. Between bites of orange chocolate cake and sips of coffee, Kun sits still, quietly deconstructing the Ten he knew and the Ten he doesn't. That old playfulness is still there but shows itself less often; Ten’s mean streak exchanged for something more tactful and subdued, but lurking in the dark, it sits pretty and waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

'Ugh, enough about me,' Ten sighs loudly, pausing to look at Kun. Suddenly he leans forward and reaches out, deft fingers pulling softly on a strand of Kun's hair at the top of his head. 'You're greying,' Ten states matter-of-fact.

'Hey,’ Kun exclaims, a little offended. ‘So what, I'm getting old.'

'I didn't say it, you did,' Ten laughs and twirls the lock between his fingers. 'Anyway, it suits you. I always thought you'd look good as a silver fox.' He meets Kun's eyes then, quickly pulling back his hand. 'On your life's autumn,' he adds, and they're back to that familiar push and pull.

Kun snorts, relaxing against the backrest of his seat. This feels natural. 'Oh you did?' he deadpans. 'You saying I look like a dilf?'

To Kun's deep satisfaction, Ten blushes. 'I’m definitely _not_ saying that,’ he denies, pursing his lips. ‘I just landed a great job position, so I'm not trying to get murdered by somebody's jealous husband, thank you very much.'

Oh. Kun frowns. Ten doesn't know.

'I'm divorced, Ten.'

Now it's his time to frown. Ten’s mouth drops into a small o-shape as he squints at Kun, and then at Cheng. 'Wait, but I thought…you've got the house and everything, you never said—'

In that instant, Cheng's voice cuts through the awkward stammer in the conversation. 'Baba, can I go to the bathroom?' she asks in a sing-songy tone, still scratching away in her notebook. Kun and Ten both look at her, a little stunned.

'Yeah,' Kun breathes. 'Yeah, of course you can.' He helps her pack up her pencils and get up, pointing her in the direction of the restroom and leaning back with one arm on the backrest until he can see her safely enter and lock the right door. Sighing, he turns back again. 'Um, yeah, the triple D. Divorced, dad and in debt. But I can tell you about that some other time.'

‘I see.’ 

Like a frightened animal, Ten retreats. He gives Kun nothing. Just stares into the bottom of his glass when he empties the rest of his iced coffee in a single gulp, like it’s the most interesting thing in the room.

Kun clears his throat. ‘So, are you with johnny?’

‘Oh, god no,’ Ten snorts, and a long strand of hair falls forward into his face.

‘Sorry for assuming.’ Kun chuckles, watching the slant of Ten’s smirk when he tucks the hair back behind his ear. Kun uses the long coffee spoon to stir the milk foam into a swirl of darkening clouds in his cup before he glances up at Ten again. ‘I don’t know, he just looks at you a certain way.’

Ten raises an eyebrow, and laughs out incredulously. Leaning back in his chair, he gives Kun a once-over. ‘Is that envy, Qian Kun?’

‘Is that the right word?’ 

Envy. He repeats it in his mind, tasting it. It's dangerous ground to tread on, but Kun can't help himself - and Ten's reaction doesn't help, either.

Ten gives him a long look from across the table; something dark and unknowable stirring in his eyes. ‘Johnny's straight, anyway,’ he says then, clicking his tongue. 'Well—'

Kun doesn't have the opportunity to follow up on that trail before Cheng stumbles out of the bathroom, clumsily closing the door a little too loudly. He pets her head when she comes close and slides up on the chair. 'Hey, you alright?'

Cheng says nothing but smiles shyly - glancing at Ten before staring down at her shoes again.

Ten seems to catch this, too, and leans forward on the table. Putting his face between his hands, Ten lowers his head to Cheng's eye level. 'So, I heard your dad is a good cook. Does he bake birthday cakes for you?' he asks in an encouraging tone.

Cheng swallows around another spoonful of her pie but half misses, streaking the side of her mouth with the creamy filling. She looks up at Ten with big eyes and nods slowly.

Ten makes an exaggerated expression of surprise. 'Woah, he does? Which is your favourite then?'

A small smile beginning to creep up on her face at the mention. 'Pancakes…' she answers.

'Pancakes!' Ten exclaims. 'Wait, are pancakes…cake?' He leans back and turns to Kun, eyebrows endearingly knit together in confusion.

'It's true,' Kun chuckles. 'We make a big pancake cake on birthdays and special occasions. It's less sugary,' he adds in a lower tone of voice, turning to Ten. 'I try to keep her intake down while I still can. Before she starts school and all that.'

Ten considers this for a second. 'That's sweet,' he pouts. 'Well. Not the sugar, I mean.'

Kun smiles. 'No, not the sugar.'

It’s on the hottest day of the year that Kun's family goes to Thailand.

Kun is nine years old and doesn’t particularly _want_ to leave all his school friends behind over the summer, but a couple days of sunshine and swimming in the ocean can’t be that all that bad, he decides in the end. Maybe he can bring back some nice souvenirs for them, suggests his mom. Maybe he'll be bitten by a shark and get to show off the nasty scar to his class, thinks Kun.

At the end of their seven day vacation, he does end up with a handful of chalky seashells in his suitcase. But when Kun goes back to China, something else comes with him, too. Not the sand at the bottom of his bag that he never really manages to get out after that. Not the dark sunburn at his nape. Not the bruise on his right knee from tripping and scrubbing it against the rough asphalt above the beach, where the colourful parasols of street food stands line up by the palm trees. 

Well, there's all of those things. But what no one can see from the outside is how Kun's palms still burn under his skin from holding hands with the prettiest boy he's ever seen - and he goes back with nothing but memories, and the stupid sand in his suitcase, the stupid sunburn, the stupid bruise.

The ocean stretches as far as he can see, big and blue and blending into the sky, the sky blending into the white sun. After all the traveling, Kun is eager to get in the water. Dad warned him not to go too far out, so he doesn’t. Just plays around in the shallows where the water only reaches to his thighs - and it feels almost as warm on his skin as the breeze that tugs on his T-shirt in the wind. The sun scorches on as he sinks his toes into the wet sand and splashes around for a while until he bores himself.

'Did you have fun?' Kun's mom asks him when he climbs back up the dunes to their temporary camp of strategically placed beach towels ( _’To the right of the guard tower, and to the left of the shower station’_ ). The bright red frames of the huge, round sunglasses perched on her nose make her look like some kind of bug when she smiles at him. 'Can you go get us some ice creams?'

The odd thing about memory is that it's a fractured thing. Weak and unreliable, it often comes back to us in pieces, half undone and half rewritten. Most memories are like that, and that's fine. There's just no other way to store all the mundane moments that fill most of our time. But some days, things happen that change you on such a fundamental level that all the trivial details around claw their way into your brain and never leave; etching a perfect image of one moment in time into thin air.

These things aren't important to a nine year old - but much later, Kun still finds himself able to recall everything he felt right as it happened.

On the hottest day of the year, with three coins pressed into his palm in a painful grip, Kun stood in line by the ice cream truck in a cold sweat despite the weather. His worry grew with each step that the line moved forward, inching closer toward the big plastic sign with photos of all the different types of ice cream that the old man sold. But under each photo unknown letters stared back at him in a foreign language, bold and black and completely incomprehensible. 

Reaching down with a face splitting smile on his face, the old man handed an ice cream cone to a child half a head shorter than Kun. The child squealed with glee and gripped it with sandy fingers - now sticky - responding easily before running away.

With his heart in the pit of his stomach, Kun stepped forward as the spot before him cleared. Pulse racing, clammy and completely joyless for the first time in the history of children and cold treats, Kun pointed a shaky finger to the sign. 

‘Two vanilla. One mango. Please,’ said Kun in Chinese.

The old man's forehead creased like linen, and his jaw jutted out in a grunt that revealed a row of yellowing teeth. Kun feared that he might be eaten alive, and he was just about to make his escape when a light voice to his right side repeated the same words back to him, tone rising in a questioning manner.

A boy leaned forward, sticking his head out to get a look at Kun's face. He was Kun's height, but more tan than him - sunkissed and glowing in the light, his bangs black and choppy. As he tilted his head, he grinned in a way that made his feline eyes crinkle. ‘Right?’

Kun's eyes widened, and he nodded quickly.

The boy turned to the ice cream man and spoke again - but in a different language now, curled and bouncy syllables spilling from his mouth. Kun stared at the curve of his profile from his side as the boy conversed with the old man, who let out an understanding _ohh_ at the translation before he laughed in a hoarse voice and dug into the ice cream box inside the stand.

'Money? Do you have money?' said the boy, and now Kun could catch the slight lilt to his sounds which gave away that he wasn't a native speaker. Kun nodded dumbly again and handed the coins to the boy, who in turn handed them to the old man.

'Thanks,' said Kun a little while later, with the cones balanced dangerously in his hands as they walked side by side down the boardwalk. His face felt hot. Maybe he was getting a heatstroke. 'How do you know Chinese?'

The boy stuck his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts and half hopped, half walked. 'Because of my family. And the tourists,' he answered. 'I'm here a lot so…I listen. And I learn.'

Kun chewed on his lip and reconsidered his phrasing to make it easier for the other to understand. 'So - you live here?'

'Mhm,' he smiled. 'And you?'

'Oh, I'm from Fujian.'

The boy gave him a confused look.

'China,' Kun clarified.

'Ah.' He snorted. 'China.'

They walked together until the asphalt met the sand. Stopping suddenly, Kun pointed to where he could see his parents way down the beach - to the left of the guard tower, and to the right of the shower station. 'I have to go now. My parents are waiting.'

The boy nodded, his smile faltering somewhat. ‘Oh, okay.’

‘See you tomorrow, maybe?’ Kun added quickly. 

A cloud drifted into view, obscuring the sun just then. Shrugging, the boy peered out at the roll of the horizon before turning back to Kun with a peculiar expression. ‘Yes. See you tomorrow, maybe.’

These are the things that Kun doesn't take special note of then, but which come back to him later in perfect clarity, as if totally real:

  1. the scorching hot sun threatening to burn the hair at his nape to a crisp, like sun rays through a looking glass
  2. the metallic taste of coins stuck on his fingers when he licks the melting ice cream running down his wrist
  3. the soft slant of the boy's nose when he gazes at the ocean; how his eyelashes are longer than on any of the girls that Kun knows at school



Kun learns a lot of things that summer - like how boys can be pretty too, and that some are prettier. 

He also learns that the boy’s name is Ten, and how to catch crabs with just a fishing line and a bait bag filled with washed up squid. Ten teaches him how to hand-tie the line without cutting his fingers on the sharp nylon thread. 

And as dusk falls, Kun listens diligently with his eyes fixed on Ten, his face washed pink in the setting sun. Even the jagged edges of the rocks underneath their bare feet look soft to the touch when they squat by the water. Ten pulls out a pocket knife to cut the line above the knot, and his fingers are warm where they brush against Kun’s. The foreign sun hangs low and plump like a nectarine in the sky, and everything is pink and hazy and just a little surreal. 

Kun is nine years old when he understands why adults act so irrational in romance movies. 

All things considered, this is what it comes down to: that in this moment, Kun wouldn’t care even if the blade of the knife slipped and dug straight into the heel of his palm, if Ten just held his hand a little longer.

In the days that follow, they take turns holding their breath under the surface - throats burning from swallowing too much salt water and laughing at nothing and everything. They part when the sun reaches its zenith above their heads, and run their separate ways for lunch with their families. 

At noon, Ten grabs Kun’s hand and sneaks into the back door of a small restaurant up the road, where the banana plants grow taller and closer together. The woman in the kitchen smiles brightly when she sees Ten. She pulls on his cheek and speaks at him the way one might coddle a newborn. The floor tiles are cold but the air is still humid, so it’s a welcome gift when she pushes a cup of vanilla ice cream with sweet corn and peanuts on top into each of their hands, straight from the freezer. 

‘For free,’ Ten repeats later, licking the stickiness from his chin. ‘Good, right?’

Kun smiles around his spoon. ‘Mm. Good.’

Ten grins and kicks out his feet to lay down on his back in the grass. His wide smile reveals the gap where one of his front teeth are missing. And Ten is cute even without it, in a dirt-on-your-nose kind of way. 

‘How did that happen?’ asks Kun curiously, more confident in his presence now. ‘Did a shark get you?’

Ten squints up at Kun. ‘What does that mean? _Shark?’_

‘Oh, uhm…’ Kun gets on his knees and throws his arm up into the air. Mimicking a big fin splitting the water surface, he puts his forehead in the crease of his elbow and leans side to side. ‘Like this! A big fish. _Shark_.’

Ten squeals and slaps Kun’s shoulder. ‘Ahh,’ he laughs, testing the new word. ‘Shark!’

It goes like that - Ten helping Kun around, Kun teaching Ten new words. They get along well despite the language barrier, and by the sixth evening Kun has forgotten all about his friends back home. All he knows is the rough scratch of sand on the flat of his tongue from dropping fruit on the ground but eating it anyway, and volleyball and sand castles and crabs and pretty, sunkissed boys. That evening, it’s not Kun but Ten who reminds him that this is the last night before he has to leave. 

‘What do we do?’ says Ten. ‘I can’t go to China. My Chinese isn’t good enough, and I don’t have any money.’

‘I can’t come see you either. School is starting, and I’m not allowed to miss class.’

They fall into silence while the waves come and go, the froth licking at their ankles. Kun thinks hard and long until a thought occurs to him, the idea pulled out of a movie he saw once with his grandma. ‘Ask me for something, then. Just one thing, but I promise that whatever it is, I’ll do it.’

Ten blinks wetly at him, and he looks smaller than usual from the way he hugs his knees tight to his chest. He seems to consider this deeply, brows furrowed and biting down hard on his lip. ‘Do you swear on it?’ 

‘I swear,’ Kun nods, and it feels like the most important moment of his whole life - of anyone’s life, in fact. 

Ten looks right at him, dead serious when he speaks, and Kun thinks that even the crashing of the waves can’t possibly drown out the sound of his frantic heartbeat right now. 

‘Promise you’ll remember me.’

Three days after their meeting at the cafe, Kun gets an unexpected call from Ten. Says he went through the photos from the interview over the weekend, and that they didn’t turn out the way he wanted, since he was rushed. Something about the framing, or how the light wasn’t perfect - Kun isn’t sure.

He stands in the kitchen by the window overlooking the garden, hand on one hip and the other holding the phone pressed against his ear. Outside, the wind is blowing through the grass like waves across an ocean. In the far end of the kitchen, Cheng sits quiet and contented at her little table with her craft supplies and a plastic bowl of freshly cut strawberries. 

It’s Monday afternoon and Kun doesn’t have anything on today that he can’t reschedule. Johnny had also looked over the photos, says Ten, and that’s enough of an excuse in Kun’s mind to have him over for dinner.

‘Yeah, of course. It’s your work and you need to be satisfied with it, I get that,’ Kun says, scratching his head. ‘Why don't you come over and I’ll cook something for you, and you can take whatever pictures you need.’

They hang up, and Kun turns back to his open laptop on the dining table. Sighing, he scrolls down the Word document in search of a new dinner plan. Something lighthearted. Casual. With one finger drumming against the table, he pauses to think, and then types in a single searchword: _sage._

When a knock sounds from the door about an hour later, the chopped shallots and yellow onions are already in the oiled skillet on the stove, spreading the pleasant aromatic news of cooking down the hall.

‘Come in!’ Kun calls, hands busied with peeling the chunky butternut squash in preparation for the pasta sauce. ‘Door's unlocked.’

The handle creaks tellingly, and Ten calls hello before closing the door behind him. Kun can hear Ten greeting Cheng in the back before his voice comes closer. ‘Hey,’ Ten says, finally appearing in the seating area and crossing the kitchen floor. ‘What’s on the menu?’

Kun looks up from the stove, and smiles.

Ten is dressed in an oversized white t-shirt and dark jeans, a camera bag hanging from one shoulder and a round pair of sunglasses on his head, pushing away his bangs. Ten looks gorgeous like that - a creature too radiant for Kun’s simple kitchen - fanning his face in the heat and complaining offhandedly about the weather. Then, Ten is right behind him, looking over Kun's shoulder and bringing the airy scent of jasmine and honeysuckle with him.

Kun inhales sharply. He tries to take a deep breath through the lightness of the floral cloud now all around him; heart thumping painfully inside his chest at Ten’s sudden proximity. 

‘Butternut and sage pasta,’ Kun says, and he nearly chokes at the dryness of his own throat. He steps aside to wipe his hand on the towel thrown over his shoulder, and motions to the table as calmly as possible. ‘You can have a seat in the meanwhile. Cool off a little and get your camera things ready.’

‘Right. Thanks.’ Ten smiles and takes a step back. He walks around the kitchen island to sit down on the other side, unpacking his camera bag in the process and arranging the flashy lenses on the table. Then he glances at the open document to the side, perceptive eyes quickly scanning the screen. 'Is this for your book?' 

'Yeah, it is. I'm still hesitant about whether I should include this recipe or not, though.' Kun uses his whole right arm to put weight on the kitchen knife. Underneath, the squash's hard insides cleave in two with a firm, satisfying glide. 'I don't know, I just haven't found the right version yet. There's some missing detail still, so I’m trying something new this time,' Kun says, thinking out loud. He adds the chopped squash to the hot skillet and turns around to the worktop on the island. 'And you get to be my taste tester today.'

Ten claps his hands excitedly. 'Yay, fun!' The sharp click of a camera shutter goes off before Kun can react, and Ten's eyes twinkle when he looks up from behind the wide lens.

Kun blinks the surprise away and feels his body instinctively stiffen under the spotlight. A sudden swirl of anxious thoughts swarm his mind; questions like whether he did his hair well enough this morning, not knowing he might end up in a magazine spread with the ghost of five o’clock shadow and dark eye bags from staying up all night writing. And it feels different this time, too, because it's just Ten with no Johnny around to reign him in under the guise of professionalism.

'Don't just stand there so awkwardly,' Ten laughs. 'God, you are old-fashioned. Either flash a smile or get back to work, gramps.'

Kun whips the kitchen towel against his own thigh with a resounding smack in response, but is unable to contain the creeping smile on his face at Ten's shamelessness. 'Ten, do I need to remind you that we're literally the same age?'

 _Click._ Another shutter snaps. This time Kun decides to ignore the watchful eye of the camera. Instead he looks down and gets busy preparing the rest of the meal, as practiced experience takes over his hands.

'Don't be stingy,' Ten says, his impish smile obvious simply through the tone of his voice. 'I'm still young and beautiful.'

Kun doesn't have a rebuttal to that.

There's less thinking involved when he gets cooking, and more feeling. He knows the recipe in his head, but even so he goes by instinct, talking Ten through some of the steps just for the sake of conversation. He boils the butternut squash in vegetable broth and then lets it simmer until smooth and thick. The familiar scent of spices fill the room - a little garlic, and a little of something else. Kun rubs a sage leaf between his thumb and index finger; his warmth releasing the strong, fragrant notes out of the fresh sage with ease. He lets Ten sniff it from his hand, and Ten hums appreciatively with his head tilted cutely to the side. 

All the while, Ten saunters around the open kitchen, snapping photos of Kun's hands at work over the wooden cutting boards, at Kun's shoulders from behind when he pours olive oil over the fettuccine, and at the sun rays that peek through the white linen of the curtains in the breeze. The door to the veranda stands half open, and in blows the scent of summer.

Kun tells Ten about the story draft accompanying the recipe - about Italy, his sage revelation, and learning curves. Kun tells Ten about how the sweetness of the squash and onions stands in perfect contrast to the stable, earthy base of the walnuts. Balance, Ten agrees, is important.

But later when Kun sets down a single plate of creamy butternut pasta sauce, perfect fettuccine, and chopped sage, spinach and walnuts sprinkled on top, Ten glances anxiously up at Kun.

‘Please, won’t you have some, too?’ Ten whines. ‘I hate eating alone.’

‘What, why?’ Kun chuckles.

While he pours a glass of water for both of them, Ten sighs deeply and ducks his head down - and Kun’s stomach twists uncomfortably when he recognises the way Ten’s gaze shifts in moments when he’s hesitating to open up.

‘It’s just embarrassing,’ Ten says. He pauses, like he’s trying to narrow it down to a better word. ’Being hungry. Wanting. You know? To be the only one eating at a table is like exposing yourself, or like telling a joke that isn’t funny. Nobody wants to be left hanging like that.’

‘Then I’ll eat with you,’ says Kun, like it's the easiest thing in the world - and it is.

He lets Cheng eat with them too. Kun sits her down beside him with a smaller plate, and makes sure her walnuts are chopped in smaller pieces. Such things didn't cross his mind at first, but five years into fatherhood and Kun thinks he's got most things down. Though some days it doesn't feel like that either. Now though, Kun finds himself breathing easy. Cheng likes the pasta, and so does Ten. Kun figures that’s the only review he’ll ever need on his cookbook.

'Mmm,' Ten hums, licking his lips and nodding while he chews. 'It's like you said, sweet and earthy.'

Kun smiles. Good. Perhaps he'll email his editor later in the evening after Ten leaves, and tell her that he wants to keep the recipe after all. The modified addition of the walnuts pulled it all together, Kun thinks, while taking his time to eat slowly and fully appreciate every layer of taste.

Dessert comes in the form of more strawberries. 'I didn't make this myself though,' Kun laughs while scooping vanilla ice cream into three bowls. 'So please don't put that in the interview.'

'Okay, promise we won't.' Ten digs his dessert spoon straight into the ice cream box before Kun is finished, smiling mischievously at him around a cold mouthful of vanilla.

Cheng blinks on in surprise, and then she starts giggling uncontrollably.

'Oh my god,' Kun exclaims. 'Look, now you taught her that!'

But he can't be upset for long. Not when Ten begins giggling, too, and reaches across the table to spoon feed her bits of strawberries and cream. On the far side of the table the camera sits heavy and intimidating, and Kun wishes he knew how to use it just so he could take Ten’s picture, instead of the other way around. Head thrown back in laughter; black hair gleaming warmly in the backlight; lips stained berry red. A single snapshot. 

After dinner, Kun takes Cheng to the bathroom to brush her teeth before bed. Ten waits on the sofa, flicking through the day's photos with one leg hitched over the other like some kind of Victorian dandy. It makes Kun laugh to himself, and the image stays in his mind while he reads Cheng a goodnight story. It's her favourite - the one about a bright, beautiful orange that suddenly tumbles into the forest, and all the faeries and woodland creatures wonder if it's a magical egg about to hatch. She dozes off before he turns the last page, but he finishes the story anyway.

It's past sundown, though the gentle June weather still feels pleasantly warm when Kun steps outside for a moment. The trees rustle and the bushes breathe in and out in the dim light - the darkening sky a swirl of faded blues by now. He doesn't hear Ten coming until a light hand touches his shoulder from behind.

'Hey, I should head home. Thanks for dinner and everything. I'll run the photos by Johnny in the morning, I'm sure he'll like these better.'

'Right. The photos,' says Kun, feeling breathless for no good reason. Ten nods and smiles, just a little. 'Uhm, well, it's late. You can stay over if you want to. You can take the couch even, it's perfectly comfortable.'

There is an ugly pause as Ten looks at him as if taken aback - his eyes widening at the proposition - and Kun realises too late that he's being way too forward. He doesn't even mean it in a suggestive way, but the words escape him so easily, because Ten's presence feels natural. Like an old friend. Like something that Kun doesn't have to think twice about to understand.

'No,' Ten says. He visibly swallows. 'No, I'll just walk home. It's fine.'

'Walk? But it's gonna be fully dark soon,' Kun frowns. 'I'll drive you.'

'I'm going to walk.'

'Then I'll walk with you.'

Ten sighs loudly, shifting his weight where he stands in the door frame, neither inside nor outside. 'Sweet Kun,' he says, voice unusually low. 'You don't need to do that.'

Suddenly Kun doesn't dare to meet Ten's eyes, but he feels them on him anyway; traveling, knowing, cutting through him like fruit. Kun looks to the right, at the blue silhouette of the hills far away. For a second they almost appear to move ever so slightly, like a heaving chest from the side. 

'No, I guess I don't. But we both know that I'm going to.'

Ten sighs once more. Silence envelopes them for what feels like an unnaturally stretched out moment - a beat passing with heavy footsteps - before Ten finally decides to speak again. 

'Alright,' he exhales and pats Kun twice on the back. 'Let's get going then.'

They walk down the long avenues of Kun's neighbourhood, strolling past white villas painted cool in the light. The suburban landscape passes by at their sides like a sea; large parks and lush foliage, vast swatches of dense blues and greens, and grass sprung out of the ground with renewed vitality from the early summer rains just two weeks ago. 

Kun had figured it would be a good area for Cheng to grow up in. And although things hadn't turned out the way he'd hoped, Kun still felt glad that he could keep the house in the end. Out here where all was quiet, he was happy.

Whereas the houses on their street sit far apart - leaning sort of crookedly against whatever old trees that support them - the rows of larger villas down the hill stand a little taller and prouder by the newly laid sidewalk. Although the thick bushes of terraced houses hide the gardens on the other side, squeaky sounds of trampoline bouncing and children's laughter escape through anyhow. On the opposite side, cars drive along the road - few and far apart, and slowly, like beetles.

Ten and Kun walk slowly as well, or so he imagines. Kun imagines other things, too, like how all things might actually be uncomplicated. If not now, then later, at some unknown point between here and elsewhere. They walk in mostly silence past the villas and houses and terraces, past the parks, past everything that Kun recognises, past empty bus stops where no one steps on or off. It's so, so close to actually being uncomplicated like that in the quiet of the night, when their footsteps thud rhythmically at the same pace - left and right, and left and right - echoing some other time that isn't this. But it's a terrible thing, in all honesty, to believe that he still knows Ten more than any other stranger does.

'It's weird,' says Ten all of a sudden. 'I never imagined things would turn out this way, but in a way it all makes sense.'

Kun frowns. 'What do you mean?'

'You've always been like this,' he continues. 'Even in university. So I suppose if anyone would settle down, get married and have kids, it would be you of all people, but I never thought of those kinds of things then.'

'What do you mean, like this?' I'm like what?' Kun chuckles, turning Ten's words over in his head.

Ten hums thoughtfully. 'Caring?' he tries, his little voice so light that Kun fears the wind will steal it all away. 'No, I don't know. Attentive, maybe.'

Kun doesn't know what to say to that. Not that it isn't true. He glances at Ten's profile, and a curious pebble seems to lodge itself in the space between his left lung and where his heartbeat thumps, because Ten has no idea of just how much he cares. 

Standing in the kitchen half an hour ago, Kun had felt that same pebble stir painfully inside his chest. He had felt it at the cafe too, and like cell memory it all comes back to him; the deafening drumming noise of rain against the small window where he sat cold and numb in his seat on the plane departing from Seoul. The window reflected nothing - just pitch black darkness outside - and the pebble twitched, twisted, growing in size like a tumour.

'Attentive or not, I'm still divorced.' Kun gives Ten a half hearted smile. 'It sounds less idyllic when you include that part.'

'Do you wanna talk about it?' 

'What is there to say?’ Kun shrugs, but keeps talking anyway. ‘Cheng was two, and I was blind. Perhaps that made it worse, not seeing it coming. We were good together, him and I, really good.' Kun inhales shakily, nausea coming in waves that make his balled up fists in his pockets tremble. 'But then I found out about everything, about the cheating and why he always came home so late, all those little things that you try to push to the back of your mind. And then I caught him, red fucking handed… Actually, I'm sorry, I shouldn't dump this on you.'

'It’s okay. I'm still a friend, am I not?' Ten's hand lingers at the back of Kun's elbow, but then it's gone again. 'So, what about now?'

'We don’t see each other or anything. It took almost a full year to get all details ironed out through the lawyers, what with the house and loans and visitation rights. All of it. He tried to take Cheng away from me. But I guess they thought my claim was better, considering the surrogacy,’ Kun says, hearing his own voice tremble as from a distance. ‘He gets every other birthday and lunar new year, but apart from that it's just her and me. Most of the assets fell to him in the end though, and I suppose he felt that was enough, because he just gave up after that. Packed up and left like all that time together meant nothing. Cold shoulder. Just like that.'

‘We’re here,’ says Ten, stopping suddenly. 

Here in the outskirts, the suburbs begin their slow transformation into the inner city. Ten points up the street to the left, where a dark apartment complex stands sharp and angular, and where the trees don’t reach above the roofs. The sounds of sirens wail not so far away. 

‘Fourth floor.’ Ten points upwards. ‘Imagine me and fifteen boxes. No lift. All alone! Not even Johnny helped me, the bastard.’

Kun, feeling like a wet rag squeezed dry of emotion after opening up like that, doesn’t know how to respond. ‘What a bastard,’ he agrees. 

Ten sighs and gives Kun a sympathetic look. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘And I’m sorry that happened to you. It wasn’t right of him to treat you like that, and I’m sure it’s been very hard for you to carry that weight for Cheng. Really.’

‘Thanks, Ten.’ 

Kun swallows dryly and doesn’t think about how he could have helped with the move, or about Ten inviting him up right now, about unseen photos stored away on a hard drive somewhere, or about the sweetness of strawberries on his tongue, or Ten’s tongue. Kun looks at Ten, and decidedly doesn’t think about anything. 

‘What now?’ Ten asks, looking uncharacteristically serious.

‘Yes, what now?’ Inside, the pebble shudders. ‘You got your pictures.’

Ten rolls his eyes at that and crosses his arms defensively across his chest. ‘Don’t be like that, Kun. You know what I mean.’

‘I…what?’ Hot hurt begins to bubble up like acidic heartburn in Kun’s throat. ‘No, I don’t know what you mean, so why don’t you just tell me what _you_ want, Ten.’

‘I can’t, I don’t know,’ Ten stammers, and it makes his voice pull tightly together in familiar frustration. His eyebrows knit together as he cocks his head to the side. Even in the low light - dark and blue under the vast sky - Ten looks scary when upset. ‘Do I have to know? Do we have to know that?’

Kun goes quiet again. Stares into the ground, shrugs. Tries to breathe despite the chafing pain in his chest. Ten goes equally silent - and so they stand there on the street outside Ten’s apartment, just breathing in and out in the same space. Eventually Ten breaks the silence, sounding tired when he does. 

‘I don’t wanna have to think through this. It’s just nice being around you. That’s all,’ he sighs, pausing. ‘So, can you cook for me again tomorrow?’

**  
II.  
**

On Tuesday night, Ten comes over for a seafood stir fry. Mussels, baby squid and tiger prawn. He brings the camera again and snaps some photos of the process. Licking the sea salt and brown sugar from his lips, Ten says the colours turned out nice. 

On Wednesday, Ten swings by for brunch between two work shifts. Kun serves him scallion pancakes and other small dishes, and Ten eats lots and fast on an empty stomach. They don't take any photos that day or the next, but stood by the sink cutting glossy persimmons into slices, Kun thinks he doesn't mind.

The rest of the week passes quickly. The camera isn’t there on Saturday either when Ten accompanies him to the farmers market, where Kun strolls between the stands picking fresh fruit and vegetables into plastic bags weighed up by the vendors. Cheng is there too, of course, and Kun doesn't miss the way that Ten's eyes sparkle when the two of them play around at the side, running circles around the stands. Kun watches them discreetly from afar, not wanting Ten to feel pressured to take care of his kid like some kind of babysitter, but noticing how quickly he adapts to Cheng's quirks anyway.

'Do you know what these are called?' Ten asks, squatting down on the cobbled ground.

Cheng bites her lower lip and twists and turns where she's standing in front of him. Then she shakes her head and smiles, starting to giggle, and Ten's face splits into a grin, too.

'These are figs,' Ten tells her slowly. The teardrop-shaped little fruits balance in his upturned palms; purple and perfectly ripe under the sun. 'Hey, Kun, can we buy some for after dinner? I want her to try them,' he calls.

‘Please?’ Cheng begs Kun with big, pleading eyes and an expectant smile when she glances back at Ten at her side, her little pigtails bouncing. ‘I wanna try them,’ she parrots.

The breeze fans warmly against Kun's face and he chuckles at the sight of the two of them together like so, and then he gives in, turning to the vendor. 'We'll have three bags of those, too.'

With the bags of figs, vegetables and a pack of brown eggs, they return home. Three bags might be overdoing it, but it's worth it just to please Ten and Cheng, and he can always use them for something else. While Kun prepares the meal with a watchful eye on the recipe on his laptop, he lets the other two escape into the sunshine in the garden. 

It's so easy like that - when gleeful laughter comes through the open door, when no shadows cloud the sky, and when they unthinkingly blend into each other right where they had left off, as if it had always been like this.

After dinner, he sets down a wooden cutting board on the table with goat's cheese and the figs from earlier that day. Kun cuts the purple fruits into slices, red and meaty on the inside, and quietly puts them onto Ten's plate, though Ten isn't watching. Instead he's stretched to the side, talking to Cheng in a soft voice - smiling as he slices and hand-feeds her the figs.

Cheng is overjoyed, both that evening and on many others that summer. Whatever timidness that was there at first, isn't. And as the days go, Kun isn't sure of who he is more jealous of.

But it's nice having someone else around to watch her, so that he can move around the kitchen with less distractions and worries about stubbed toes or other disasters, out of sight and out of view. The next time that Ten comes around - half a week later because he got cussed out by Johnny at work for taking an extra 30 minutes of lunch break - Ten keeps Cheng company at her crafts table. They paint with watercolours together, and when she spills the glass of water all over the floor, Ten doesn't get angry, just reaches down swiftly and cleans up before the paint reaches the corner of the rug.

Cheng adores him, and although Ten doesn't say it, Kun thinks Ten adores her, too.

Maybe it's the lunch break incident, maybe it's something else. In all honesty, Kun would rather blame Johnny for disturbing the peace than have to search his memory for a misstep of his own - perhaps something mentioned by accident, too transparent or too serious - but either way, there is an unwelcome shift in the wrong direction.

Ten starts coming by less often. 

And sure, Kun has work too. There's a new employee at the restaurant, so Kun decides to step in and teach her first hand. He likes to maintain the friendly family atmosphere of the place, anyway. Team building and whatnot. Then his editor wakes him up at 3 a.m., calling from Berlin just to bombard him with questions about the draft, his progress and work, work, work. So altogether, Kun is also busy.

It should all be fine, because that's just adult life, but it doesn’t feel fine.

After his editor calls him, Kun turns over in bed with the shrill tone of the phone still hammering at his temples. It's dark inside the drawn blinds of the bedroom, but slowly familiar shapes appear out of the darkness as his eyes begin to get used to it. The silhouette of the bedside table, the armchair, the double wardrobe by the other wall. And the second bedside table, of course, on the other side of the large bed, though that one is emptied. He still hasn't gotten used to sleeping in the middle. Even the duvet feels uncomfortably heavy - smothering him underneath.

Kun barely sleeps that night, not even when the morning sun begins to creep through the blinds. Instead he thinks about all things passed, about strangers and lovers and exes, and then he thinks about Ten, even though he shouldn't.

Kun misses Ten. He tries to pinpoint it to something else, but there's just that - missing his company, his presence. Simple, like so.

It's not until the next weekend that Ten comes by for dinner again, but when he does, the camera bag is there once more.

'Bad lighting again?' Kun questions a little sourly with a raised eyebrow in the doorway.

Ten rolls his eyes and walks past him into the half-lit open kitchen. 'Don't you want nice photos? You know our magazine has a huge readership, not just among housewives and casual readers, but in the big leagues. Prominent people.' Ten stops to lean against the counter by the sink; their places switched from where they usually stand. 'This could be your big break, Kun.'

The tall lamp by the wall drapes Ten in soft light where he's standing, casting shadows behind him but lighting his face with warmth, from the softness of his lips to the skin where the black shirt he's wearing is opened two buttons too far, revealing a sliver of his collarbone at the side.

'How thoughtful of you,' Kun says, eyeing Ten.

'Yes, actually, how thoughtful of me,' Ten agrees, gaze going dark, and he pauses. 'What's for dinner?'

'You'll see.’

Kun crosses the floor and stops by the bookcase on his way, reaching above for the wine bottles stored safely on top. In the background, the shutter of the camera goes off. Kun isn't sure how Ten always seems to be finding new angles and perspectives for his work, but he figures he doesn't have to understand either. That's why Ten is a photographer, and Kun a writer.

With a pair of sparkling glasses in one hand and a bottle of red in the other, Kun approaches Ten. He sets them down on the countertop with a clink and pours the dark liquid slowly into each glass, before raising one in the air for Ten.

'I don’t drink at work.' Ten eyes him sceptically, the camera still in his hand.

Kun furrows his brows theatrically in mock confusion and looks down at his wristwatch. 'It’s six o’clock. Your shift just ended.'

It goes quiet - no sounds from within the house or from outside, no sounds from Ten - nothing but his breathing and the tick of the minute hand inside Kun's wristwatch. The trace of the implication hangs suspended in the air, invisible to anyone else but palpable between them in this moment; dark, real, and raw.

‘Are you flirting with me, Qian Kun?' Ten asks slowly, his eyes narrowing into sharp crescents.

‘Depends,' Kun hums and holds the glass a little higher. 'Is it working?’

Ten studies Kun’s face, though his own features are unreadable, and then he shrugs, reaching for the glass with slender fingers. He raises it to his lips and tips it slowly as he drinks - head tilted slightly askew - and Kun lets his eyes linger shamelessly on Ten's mouth where it meets the glass.

‘To my shift, which just ended.’

The camera stays at the edge of the table that evening, forgotten in the dark.

Before Ten worked as an in-house photographer for a major food magazine in the States, he worked other odd jobs - but far, far away from there. There was the university library (from which he was fired), the tutorship (from which he quit), but first there was the corner store. 

He used to study between customers, who came few and far apart in the nighttime hours. Ten tells him this much later, and it’s all very strange, Kun replies, that for some reason he never walked into that same corner store on his street when coming home late one evening. To this, Ten agrees.

There appear to be many of these almost-converging moments spaced out over time, but luckily for them, the universe is kind and relentless. 

Kun thinks a lot about these kinds of things when he first moves to South Korea. Lying down on his back in the bed of his new dormroom - his new home - Kun thinks all about missed connections. That train of thought began in a place far from here, but now it unravels like a yarn ball tumbling down a flight of stairs. 

Firstly, there is the whole thing with university. You get a funny feeling in your stomach when you’re about to leave a place. Curiosity and dread forms a painful knot when intertwined, and even though Kun is excited to begin his degree, he still finds the move away from his family to be incredibly difficult. He misses his mom and dad, the cats, his grandma, good Chinese food, their restaurant, and all the old ladies there. But it’s a great university - one that caught his attention when he stumbled into a seminar about college rankings in his second to last year of highschool, purely by accident. 

Kun takes it on himself to go to the airport alone on the morning of the final day. Bidding his heartfelt farewells to his mom and dad at the door, Kun tells them that it’s his own journey to make now. On the train to the airport, the familiar cityscape passes by in the window. He watches people go about their day, businessmen rushing to the metro, and school children taking buses. _What happens next?_ Kun wonders. _Who gets on? Who steps off?_

So much of life seems dictated by strict timetables and schedules, and yet more often than not the buses don’t come on time at all. So you miss that train, or you miss your flight, or you get off at the wrong stop and sit by somebody different that day. Maybe that person could be the love of your life - but you don’t dare speak, and then they leave at the next stop, and you watch the back of their head as they walk through the crowd, and you crane your neck when the carriage start to move again - and you’ll never know. 

There’s so many missed connections like that, Kun thinks while blinking at his own reflection in the window, and the realisation makes his stomach hurt. 

Passing by the corner store on his way home from class, Kun looks at it briefly before walking on. Or maybe he doesn’t really see it all - in retrospect, he isn’t sure. Either way, Kun walks past it the next time too, and every other day from autumn to summer, and he never does meet Ten. 

Or at least not like that.

There might be other moments like these, where their paths tumble toward each other like high speed trains on the same track, before diverging at the very last minute. If these things happen - at the grocery store maybe, or on a dark dancefloor somewhere, passing each other unknowingly in the crowd - they wouldn’t know it. 

Kun spends his first year at university alternating between loving and hating his Business degree. His grades take a sharper uphill curve though when the guy in his practical is sick one day, and Kun happens to be assigned a new a study partner - Doyoung. 

In terms of pure hard work and effort, it’s a match made in heaven. They breeze through exercises faster than the teacher can supply them with worksheets, and although Doyoung is kind of a stuck up bitch outside of class, Kun doesn’t really care. He’s got other friends to get soft with, so it doesn’t matter if Doyoung scolds Kun when he shows up to class hungover once, or when Doyoung complains about the tutors, his randomly assigned dormmate, or any other thing between heaven and hell. 

In fact, complaining seems to be Doyoung’s single favourite thing to do in the whole world - and like everything else, he’s terribly good at it. Maybe that’s why he’s the best student in the macroeconomics class, Kun figures, since he’s so damn adept at seeing patterns and picking up on flaws in the smallprint that no one else notices. 

Which isn’t to say that Doyoung cannot be nice, too - he is - just not as often as most people. But Kun comes to appreciate his forthrightness in the midst of the other freshmen, all sickly sweet and trying way too hard to make friends only to drop them a week later. Doyoung does none of this; honest to a fault maybe, but honest. 

If complaining is his favourite sport, then Doyoung’s favourite target is his dreaded dormmate. 

Kun listens with one ear turned away at these stories, taking them with a grain of salt while his study partner drones on during breaktime. He chuckles at the real crazy anecdotes, and tries to offer comments here and there about how they could communicate better for a more pleasant atmosphere in the house. From an outsider’s perspective, it seems that for the first time in his life, Doyoung has met his match in someone who sees right through his desperate need to be right, but makes sure he never gets the last word. This, of course, has Doyoung up the walls in frustration. 

‘He used my tupperware again!’ Doyoung shouts one morning. Other times, it might go something like, ‘He ate my yoghurt. _In front_ of me. Who even does that?’

‘Why don’t you try to set some rules together?’ Kun suggests near the end of spring, not as entertained by the drama any longer. ‘About food, or when you’re allowed to have friends over. Things like that.’

‘That’s a great idea,’ Doyoung nods very seriously, which makes Kun laugh a little, though he hides it behind a cough. 

It isn’t actually a good idea, turns out. Surely it had the potential to be one, but something must have happened between its first mention and when Doyoung comes back a week later, face turned green by his grudge. 

‘No friends over after nine, I told him. No guests stealing my breakfast, and no…well, you know, on weeknights!’ Doyoung tells him in an exasperated voice, and it feels like a scolding even though it’s not Kun’s fault. ‘And guess what he does. Three guys, Kun. _Three_ guys, he brings over, one after the other. In one night! I could hear them talking and moaning and, oh god, I’m gonna be sick.’

Kun can’t help it when breaks out into a short lived fit of laughter. ‘Oh no,’ he snorts, trying hard to pull himself together and apologise for not taking the matter seriously enough. ‘That’s terrible.’

Doyoung glares at him, and purses his lips. ‘You’re coming to my party on Friday,’ he says suddenly, which is an odd way of inviting someone, Kun thinks. ‘And you’re gonna befriend him and take him out of the house, because I can’t stand to be around him for a day longer.’

So, this is how it goes when the trains finally converge on a single track; two paths intersecting from out of the darkness, unknowingly and unintentionally, but perhaps not so accidentally after all.

When Kun walks into the crowded student apartment that Friday night, he’s confused to see how many friends that Doyoung apparently has, though maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise, considering all the clubs that he’s involved in on the side. Snaking in between sharp elbows and vodka spilling from plastic cups, Kun bumps into Doyoung aggressively hosting in the living room.

’Thank god, you’re finally here,’ Doyoung whispers into Kun’s ear as he pulls him to the side. ’I was just about to claw his eyes out for opening my expensive bottle of Andong that I’d been saving.’

’What are you girls gossiping about?’ calls an amused voice from the doorway to the kitchen behind them. ’I sure hope it isn’t about me.’

Doyoung looks ready to pounce, but settles for holding onto the back of Kun’s arm with a death grip. ’Kun, meet my friend,’ says Doyoung through gritted teeth.

Kun turns around to see a skinny boy leaning against the doorframe, twirling a glass of some sparkly liquid in his hand with a bored expression on his face, though there’s a burning intensity behind his eyes. He looks dangerous - dressed all in black - or at least like he’s trying very hard to be. But when they lock eyes, Kun sees right through him, recognising something innocent in its place. 

‘This is Ten,’ says Doyoung. 

And Kun says, ’I know.’

He doesn’t remember exactly what happens after that, but somehow they end up on the balcony. Kun swipes a deck of cards from the living room table on the way out, fiddling with it while Ten lights a cigarette in the chilly air outside. 

Ten recognises him, too. They talk about all things passed, how Ten studies fine arts and has big dreams of other faraway places. And he isn’t actually the demon Doyoung had painted him up to be - but funny and charming instead. Kun shows Ten a magic trick using a cigarette from Ten’s pack of reds, making it disappear in his fingers, and Ten’s delighted laughter is like music to his ears. It’s a cheap trick, but worthwhile just for that. 

’Do you believe in destiny, Qian Kun?’ Ten asks afterward, peering at him through a cloud of smoke when he exhales. The cigarette dangles lightly between his fingers, tipping ashes onto his jeans where he’s sat cross-legged on the balcony floor opposite Kun.

Kun considers the question for a long minute while shuffling the card deck. At the turn of the last card, he stops.

’No… No, I don’t think I do,’ Kun says finally, shaking his head. ’But I believe in accidents. And I think most people tend to mistake that for fate because it’s more comforting that way, but really there is no rhyme or reason behind anything. Things just sort of happen, though if you take a chance on an accident, I guess that’s practically the same thing as destiny anyway.’

Ten grins. ’How poetic.’

’I'm not trying to be. I’m very serious.’

’What if I want it to be poetic?’ Ten challenges. He smothers the cigarette against the concrete floor until the embers suffocate inside the remaining stump, and puts his weight on one hand onto the ground as he leans forward.

Suddenly Ten is so close to his face that Kun can see each individual eyelash, how pink and soft his lips look and the way the tip of his tongue darts out, and a million fluttering butterflies are set loose in Kun’s stomach all at once. Amber light peeks through the crack in the half open balcony door, illuminating the left side of Ten's face in a vertical line and making the row of earrings there glimmer like gold. Music and animated voices can be heard from within, but it sounds like miles away.

There is no good reply to Ten’s question, because he’s not looking for an answer. So Kun can do nothing but hold his breath and feel his heart pound high in his throat, right below the skin. Ten's pupils widen when they lock eyes and the corners of his mouth pull upwards ever so slightly.

'Maybe I want it to be,' Ten repeats in a whisper as he closes the distance. 'So just let me have this.' And then he's kissing Kun. Ten is kissing Kun and Kun kisses him back, and back, and back, and back.

Ten tastes like ash mixed with strawberry chapstick, but his tongue is soft and slick against Kun’s. If Kun’s heart was beating fast before, it nearly bursts out of his chest when he puts one hand to the side of Ten’s face - tentative at first, but growing more possessive with each hot breath shared between them. Ten grabs Kun's shirt and pulls him even closer, and it feels so good kissing him that it makes Kun’s head spin.

Everything turns slow and sticky, like trying to run inside a dream. Ten sucks on Kun’s bottom lip, licking into him everywhere, wet and sweet. Kun caresses the back of Ten's neck, squeezing and dragging his fingernails down where it meets the sharp line of his jaw; so unlike the boyish puffiness that had been there once. Underneath Kun's hands, Ten feels warm but razor-edged, but it only makes him more desirable, like a forbidden fruit. Except—

'Wait, wait,' Kun mumbles into Ten's mouth, reluctantly pulling away. 'You do know that Doyoung is trying to set us up, right?'

'I don't give a shit about what Doyoung wants,' Ten laughs, like it’s the silliest thing he’s ever heard. 'I'm doing this because I want to.'

Kun exhales in relief. Tilting his head with an encouraging smile, Ten mirrors his hesitant movement before Kun says the magic words.

'So…do you wanna come home with me?'

Ten grins again - wicked and carefree - pulling Kun down deep into a whirlpool that lasts a lifetime.

Neither the kiss or what happens next that night is Kun's first time. But it often feels like it, in the memories that are to come. Time and time again, Ten makes Kun feel like he's seeing something new or experiencing a first for the second time, and a third, and a fourth. Nothing compares to them. Not to how naturally they slot together, breathing through each other as they kiss, or to how Ten is caring and bubbly when Kun needs it the most.

It feels amazing to be able to communicate more clearly in a common language, but the memory of Thailand quickly fades as a silly story that never held much meaning. Because Ten is not just something Kun had conjured up in his mind after swallowing too much salt water. Ten is _real._ Warm, beautiful, strong, and bony in places. Sure, they talk about the past. Laughing about it sometimes, they'll slap their knees and say _oh, how strange, remember that?_ What a bizarre coincidence. What a happy little accident. But it doesn't need to be more than that, because Kun likes to imagine himself as the fisherman and not the fish.

One month after meeting Ten, Kun asks him to be his boyfriend.

Ten says yes.

That day, the cherry blossoms bloom. They walk hand in hand by the river in the sunshine, not quite wanting to go home yet. Another coffee, perhaps, just to spend some time.

Love, Kun learns, is quiet and gentle. It's the comfort of seeing your boyfriend in a room full of people from across the crowd of a party, or a classroom, or when getting lost in the supermarket and kissing Ten's temple when he finds him again.

Doyoung hates it, of course. Not the fact that Kun actually does end up often freeing him of Ten's presence in the dorm, but because Kun drags Ten along to everything else instead - parties, dinner between friends, group study sessions or waiting outside of class, much to Doyoung's dismay and Ten's delight.

The end of semester rolls around way too quickly. Kun dreads the awkward timing of the summer break, knowing it will most likely be the end of their honeymoon phase. He waves Ten off at the airport before his own flight home, two weeks later. They promise to call, but in the end Kun is so busy working late shifts at the restaurant and burning his fingers on the pans, that he falls head first in bed in bone deep exhaustion whenever he comes home. 

So he doesn't call, and Ten doesn't either, for whatever reason. In the end, there is radio silence.

On his way back to Seoul in September, Kun finds himself on another train, wondering if this time the brook won't stream uphill despite the odds, that maybe, he’s run out of luck. 

The wheels of his suitcase squeak when they drag over the bumps in the ground as he walks his way back to the dorms, past the corner store with its cold light shuddering like a moth's flame in the dark. But hunched over on the doorstep to Kun's building sits a hooded creature waiting for him, and Ten looks up, smiles, and all is well.

In those days, Kun used to feel like they had invented something. Like they were the first lovers on earth and no one else had ever felt the same surge of want and adoration for someone that consumed his life back then.

Kun was slow to give in but loved in extreme amounts, fully and all-consuming, though reserved only for Ten. Ten on the other hand loved everybody and everything - bright colours and things that were pretty on the eye, like odd leaves in the autumn that were more red than the others, cute school children at museums, handsome bouncers and art teachers and stray cats on walks home from a night out. 

But then he shrivelled up defensively when it actually mattered, for that was the price of how hard he loved. Ten was sensitive and fragile; his little heart splayed open to the world like some kind of dissected amphibian specimen, and prone to periods of deep sadness then, swallowed by his own suffering just as much as his empathy for the pain of others.

Learning how to take care of each other is a struggle, but the urge to do it second nature. If there isn't class and neither has a work shift to rush to, they meet at Kun's place and lie on the bed, sometimes in silence. Oftentimes Ten will sit with his legs crossed drawing or writing poems - the tip of his tongue darting out from between his lips in dreamy distractedness, before he'll pull back, tilt his head perhaps as he repeats the words out loud in a hushed tone. While Ten writes or paints, Kun studies on his laptop around the markers scattered on the bed. 

They cuddle when they get tired, and then Kun goes to cook a meal or two in the cramped space of the tiny kitchen when Ten’s empty stomach starts to purr like a cat.

Ten was always hungry for love, learning and food. And Kun, an open kitchen, serving Ten undivided attention between breakfast and dinner.

Life is good while dating Ten. It's not easy being a young adult, between exams and tight money, but somehow it all feels like walking on clouds when Ten is there to kiss him. When Kun looks back on the time they spent together, it comes back as hazy and blurred, blending together in places where there might really have been a three month gap. Long shifts resemble each other, and one exam period is exchanged for another like it's all the same.

Instead, Kun structures his memories of Ten according to the order in which he got new piercings. There was five in the beginning. Six months into their relationship, Ten gets his helix pierced (meaning he can't sleep on that ear while it heals, but Kun doesn't mind; he'll just spoon Ten from the other side instead). After that there's the conch on the right side, and the next year, a rook. With every new addition, Kun feels himself falling in love a little more, and Ten sparkles and shines under the limelight of the dance floor like he's the most valuable jewel in the whole wide world.

He asked once why Ten liked piercings so much.

‘It’s fun,’ Ten replied easily with shrug. Then he chewed on his bottom lip for a second, adding, ‘I like how the pain can become something beautiful.’

Kun learns that Ten likes other kinds of pain, too.

Sometimes it's sloppy and rushed, rough as if it was the last time, fingernails leaving angry red marks down a thigh or a fisted hand around the hair at the top of Ten's head, dragging him wherever Kun wants him to be.

Other times it's carefully planned out around some visual idea of a scene sparked in Ten's mind. Like when he first demonstrated to Kun how to securely tie a knot just tight enough around his own wrists to leave him completely defenceless. They sit on the floor of Kun’s bedroom on a Sunday night practicing how to twist and turn the rope in the right formations, the same way other couples might work together at crosswords. 

There's so much that Kun doesn't know which Ten opens his eyes to, and he's thankful and giddy and maybe just a little tipsy too, but the thing that Kun gets most worked up about is the trust that Ten puts in him.

Wrist to wrist behind his back, the red rope around Ten's chest pulls his elbows close to his sides as he sinks down low on the bed, falling forward to wherever gravity pulls him. Kun can see his back muscles move beneath the shibari ropes, which squeeze and slither like snakes around Ten's body, presented as a decorated gift before him. Tied down with nowhere to go, Ten entrusts himself in the most intimate way for Kun to use however he pleases, and it makes Kun’s heart swell almost painfully with devotion.

Reaching forward, Kun lets his fingers brush against Ten's where they're tied back, letting him know that he's there. The tender touch lingers until Kun's heartbeat calms down enough for him to drag his hands down the small of Ten's back, down his hips to the smooth skin below, and even lower, to where the red rope digs into the plush skin of Ten's upper thighs, pulling his ankles back flush against it. Spread out like that below Kun, Ten is immovable, open, and waiting.

Love isn't just gentle, but wild like a frenzied animal, Kun also learns. Sometimes they fuck for hours like that, past the point where he doesn't think Ten can take it anymore, but he always does with another whimper and a boneless smile. 'Feels nice,' he breathes. 'Want more.' And Kun is always there to give Ten whatever he wants.

At the end of the summer and the start of their third year of university, Ten comes back once more from Thailand sporting a tan and a renewed glow that has Kun in absolute awe. There are no new piercings in his ears, but Ten winks and says that he did get _something._ So Kun has to suffer through what feels like the longest one hour lecture of his life, before Ten drags him off into a cubicle to show him. 

Ten is the most beautiful at summertime, shining as if the heat warmed a stone deep inside his chest from within, and radiating this energy outwards wherever he goes. Glinting just as brightly does the silver stud in the middle of his tongue when Ten drops to his knees in front of Kun.

'You can touch it if you want, it's healed,' Ten smiles, which is more begging than offering, in the context of things.

Kun knowing Ten, strokes his cheek with a gentle hand and playfully angles Ten's jaw to open wider, before slowly sticking two fingers into the wet, slick heat of his mouth. And respectively, Ten knowing Kun, holds his tongue out even when drool begins to collect in the corners of his mouth and drip down his chin. It's a dangerous game they like to play; comforted by one another's touch but testing the limits of where it can take them.

'I like it, it's pretty,' Kun hums as he scissors his middle and ring finger on either side of the piercing, pushing deep into Ten's mouth. 'You're so pretty like this.'

Ten's eyes fill with tears when the tip of Kun's fingers brush too far down, tickling at his shitty gag reflex which threatens to make his throat clamp down any second. But Kun can see the pride burn in Ten's eyes at the compliment even through the tears, and Ten nods, nods at the question that isn't said but hangs in the humid air anyway, nods because it's okay that it hurts when Kun is there to guide him through it.

Besides, it just makes it more endearing to see how hard Ten tries in spite of his gag reflex when Kun fucks his mouth, piercing and everything. 

It feels good but different when Ten laps enthusiastically at Kun's cockhead - the metal cold against the sensitive skin there. It feels great when Ten takes him into his mouth, tight and hot and perfect all around, happily swallowing when Kun comes down his throat with a muffled groan. Still on his knees, Ten keeps the eye contact even when Kun leans down to spit into his open mouth, pushing two fingers into the sticky mess of cum and saliva inside, swirled around the metal stud. But it feels the best when Ten's face splits into a wide smile that makes his eyes crinkle softly, as he pulls Kun down into a kiss with a hand on his neck.

Kissing Ten is like nothing else - sweet, innocent and tingly - even this far into their relationship. It's the start of everything, and the end of everything.

They like sitting by the river. If not, they stay at Kun's place where it's warm and there's always food to be made. He makes it a point to make Thai food every now and then, especially when Ten is in a grumpy mood from missing his dogs back home. One time Ten tells Kun that the sexiest thing about him is his cooking abilities, but Kun laughs and says he doesn't believe him (it's his extensive knowledge of mortgages).

Only rarely do they go home to Ten, which Kun supposes is mostly because of Doyoung's nagging, and because Kun's own dormmate is rarely ever home. Even though Doyoung was the one who tried to get them together to begin with, he always seems quite regretful of his life choices whenever he walks by with a cup of tea to see Kun and Ten draped over each other on the couch. All in all, it’s just more convenient not to hang there.

But whenever Ten does invite him up once in a blue moon, it always feels special.

Holding hands outside their favourite late night restaurant, Ten still looks hungry. ‘I want you to fuck me in my bed tonight,’ Ten informs him very seriously, apropos of nothing. ‘I want you to fuck me so hard that Doyoung hears in the other room.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Kun laughs, leaning down to kiss him. ‘Crazy romantic.’

And then they do - and again in a million other ways, in a million other places.

Kun loves Ten in the bedroom, in the shower, and bent over the dining table, just once. Loves Ten whether he's asleep or awake, clothed or undressing, when they bicker in the cinema over what movie to watch, or what dinner to have, or who gets to be little spoon. Kun loves him when he sulks, when they fight for real, loves him even more when they make up. Kun loves how Ten loves him back, and in the end, Kun loves him long after Ten doesn't anymore.

Or, in any case he supposes that's how things were, in the aftermath of it all. Kun never asked if this was true - but he always assumed that Ten was probably hurt the most, because he always felt things more deeply, and because he was the one who was left on the doorstep.

Except it was all way more complicated than that.

Kun is promised an internship by his personal supervisor, set to start right after graduation. Ten is accepted to a Masters degree in Seoul. A mutual friend is considering renting out her two bedroom apartment, which they call dibs on. In the fresh spring air, the sunlight streams through the wide windows into the spacious kitchen, and Ten glances at Kun over his shoulder with a knowing smile.

But when the summer heatwaves arrive in the days after they do their graduation walk, Kun never does start his internship. They never sign the lease for the apartment. And if Ten does or doesn't continue his art, Kun never finds out.

Kun's family rarely calls - even less so his dad. So when Kun sees the missed phone calls, he knows something is deeply wrong. It takes another couple of months of hospital visits and tests to find out what's really going on, but all Kun comes to know at that point is how sick his mom is. They'd tried to keep it from him so not to distract from university, but after having passed out in the middle of the day in front of all the customers, the doctors said she might not have much time left. Said she needed to rest. No work and the meds on time every day. That was all they could do - the rest was up to her body to pull through.

Kun has no choice in it, realistically, because his parents can't afford the medical costs without the restaurant. Of course he has to come home. Ten says he does have a choice, screaming through the tears after their third argument about it on the same day, but Kun really, really, doesn't.

Five days later, Kun takes the first cheap flight home that he can afford, and the rain is heavy that night. That time period is the blurriest of all, when all things came crashing down, ripping everything apart with no justice involved. 

But maybe that was just the cost of the luck they'd been given before; a small price for a piece of heaven.

The same way one’s brain shuts off during a traumatic experience, Kun finds himself unknowingly blocking everything out just to get through the first weeks. Sure, he was sad. Between anger outbursts and blaming himself, he was devastated both by his mother's health and Ten, and by how fucking unfair life is. But there was no time to mourn what they had lost when he needed to step up for his family. Instead he threw himself into work, working double shifts until his mom could afford to stay home full time. 

Once and then twice, the universe had pulled their paths together. Now it did the opposite, and Kun could do nothing but ride that wave where it took him. Slowly but surely a new reality kicked in.

Because you have to go on - there is no other way of surviving.

The remaining figs sit in a weaved basket on the livingroom table, basking in the sun until Kun finds the inspiration to do something with them. A couple hours later and Cheng comes running from her room when Kun shouts that the bread is ready. She bounces excitedly in one place, watching as Kun takes out the dark loaf of fig and walnut bread from the oven. Once it’s cooled down a bit, he butters a few thick slices, but almost sets the table with three plates out of habit. Cheng munches on and afterwards they go to the park. She’s happy like that - he’s happy like that - but for some reason it doesn’t feel quite the same as a few months ago.

Later that night after he puts Cheng to sleep, Kun walks into the kitchen to soothe his late night hunger. The bits of figs are just as juicy and sweet when Kun has some more, so it’s a shame that Ten isn’t there to taste it.

It's too quiet in the kitchen, too empty on the other side of the table, and Kun quits chewing when he realises just how badly it all hit him when he wasn't looking. 

He used to be lonely after Ten, after other people, certainly after the divorce. Eventually the feeling shifted into a comfortable silence - loneliness to aloneness - but now the two seemed blurred. Although Kun spent a long time learning how to be alone again, Ten's presence tugs on familiar heartstrings. Sometimes it's a painful sensation, like on another evening walk when the topic of the past rises to the surface, unintentionally but unavoidable; the constant shadow looming behind them.

'I was on my own a lot, working on photography and the thesis. But there were other people after you, of course,' Ten says, shrugging a little. 'Many, to be honest, though nothing lasted very long. There was one guy who stuck around for a few years, business man kinda type, but… There was this feeling of, I like us better when you're not actually here. You know?'

Kun chuckles at the image of Ten as a spoiled doll to some CEO, and yet the story makes him a little sad. Ten deserves all the attention and pampering in the world, but not just once a month on a business trip by somebody who doesn't really understand him.

These things aren't his to tell Ten, yet Kun secretly wishes he could. Like the functional adult he is, he’s supposed to be alone but not lonely, yet time after time it starts to feel less like it, when Ten's intermittent presence in his home leaves Kun needing him there again soon after. 

It seems that for a third time Ten has crashed right into his life and turned it upside down, prying Kun's carefully arranged, colour-coded existence out of his hands and leaving him breathless on the floor, building blocks scattered, chest heaving, and never quite the same.

'I'm sorry you weren't happy,' Kun says honestly. 'But maybe you needed to go through that just to learn some other thing.'

Ten smiles. 'Yes, perhaps.'

In the breeze, his elbow nudges against Kun, the shape of his body warm and familiar even out of sight. Emboldened, Kun lets his hand fall open to his side. It always feels like this when they walk, as if the rest of the world was sleeping and Kun could do anything at all with no consequences. So when Ten's fingers brush against Kun's, hand finding his, Kun doesn't pull away. Maybe he doesn't want to pretend anymore.

'Is this okay?' Ten asks softly. 'Don't think so hard, just say if you like it.'

The feeling of Ten's hand slotting into his makes Kun's chest tingle with happiness and sets his head spinning.

'Yeah, it's okay,' Kun laughs. Looking up at the big sky, stupidly giddy and overjoyed like a child, it takes all his willpower not to pull Ten in and kiss him, too.

Soul music fills the room, smooth and groovy where it comes out of the speakers. The soundscape brings a pleasant ebb and flow to Kun's cooking, and he finds himself moving to the beat of the song while he walks between the stove and the fridge. (Ten makes fun of him for it, of course, playfully imitating Kun's dad moves with Cheng as his bedazzled audience.)

'Hey, you done with the base yet?' Kun eyes the plastic bowl in front of Cheng on the table. Her chubby hands are sticky with butter, biscuit crumbs scattered in a half-circle in front of her.

'No,' she giggles, and Kun smiles back, ruffling her hair with his clean hand.

'Well, if you want dessert you're gonna have to help me,' he says, turning back to the pan on the stove. 'Ten, what's the status update on the plums?'

Ten snorts, hands reddened by the fruit juice. 'Nearly done, chef.'

It's nice like this, cooking dinner not just _for_ them, but together. Spilling some, laughing some. It doesn't matter if the cheesecake turns out good or not when the time spent preparing it is the sweeter. 

_Son of A Preacher Man_ comes on, and Kun sings along to the chorus with unreserved enthusiasm, as he shakes the vegetables in the pan while they turn crispy. It only makes Cheng laugh even more, and so does Ten - not teasing now, but endeared, if Kun can read him right - so of course Kun sings a little louder.

While those two make the dessert at the side, Kun is in charge of the main dish. It’s not anything particular for the book, just something that came to mind under his hands. Once Cheng finishes pressing the base of the cheesecake into the baking tin, she asks to go to her room and play for a while, leaving Ten and Kun alone in the kitchen.

They reopen the bottle of red which they had never finished. Ten pours the remaining wine into the two tallest glasses he can find in the cabinet; deep and round like bowls in his small hands. Sipping from it, Ten puts the other glass on the counter beside the stove for Kun, and in the dimly lit space the glass catches the light at an angle, reflecting a rosy constellation onto the white panel of the cabinet behind. 

They sing and cook while moving around each other in the kitchen, without ever bumping into one another, and in the background another album tracklist finishes. 

'Have you gotten a publishing date yet?' 

'Oh, no,' Kun says and glances at Ten, who's long hair has fallen into his face while he's cutting the plums into quarters. 'I'm still going through some things with my editor…she was thinking we might try a different angle. Plus, I'm considering rewriting the ending.'

Ten hums and puts another plum onto the cutting board. He makes a huffing sound as he tries to blow a distracting strand of hair from his eyes, throwing his head back, but can’t quite get it away.

Kun wipes his hand on the terry towel hanging on the hook on the wall. 'Here, let me help you.' Picking up one of Cheng's colourful hair ties left out on the table, Kun carefully ties Ten's hair back. 'That better?'

Ten pauses with the knife in hand so he doesn't injure himself while Kun pulls his bangs back. 'Yeah, thanks,' he mumbles, face flushed red by the wine.

'So how's the interview going? Is Johnny done yet? I haven't heard back from him yet, so I was considering giving him a call,’ Kun says. 

'Yeah, uh, I think he was also gonna try a different angle, maybe?' Ten replies.

Kun's eyebrows furrow together while he washes his hands in the sink. The piece needed to be done by the time the publisher signed off on his book, so perhaps he needed to call Johnny anyway to check up on the progress.

Ten interrupts his anxious train of thought with a hand on his lower back, his touch pulling Kun back into the present. Tipping the thin edge of the glass against the bridge of his nose, Ten swallows and licks the redness from his lips while he absentmindedly watches Kun from the side, humming along to the tune of the song.

'Ugh, I'm feeling so sophisticated and French today.' Ten takes another swig of wine and shivers, or maybe bounces his shoulders to the music. 'Like a Parisian housewife,' he smiles, squinting at Kun through crinkly eyes, clearly pleased by his own observation.

Kun tries to not look too fond, in case that might spur Ten on further. 'You'd like that, wouldn't you,' he hums, while whisking the white sauce in the non-stick saucepan until it thickens over the slow heat.

‘Jobless _and_ rich? While making art from home? Sounds like a dream.’ 

Kun laughs to himself at the thought of Ten sitting on a balcony to some expensive French top floor suite, with a towel wrapped around his hair and watching the city from above. Indeed, it sounds like a dream. 

'Anyway,’ Ten says, clicking his tongue. ‘How's the Béchamel going? I can’t remember if I like it or not.’

It always seems to come down to this; the falling into place, the familiarity, and the dangerous curiosity rooted underneath which makes Kun surge forward so blindly with no thought of consequence. 

Letting go of the whisk momentarily to bravely stick a finger in the hot, but not scalding, sauce - Kun smiles. 'Well,' he says calmly and raises his index finger in the air, holding it right below Ten's mouth as the generous amount of creamy white sauce begins to drip slowly down the sides. 'Why don't you taste it and see what you think?'

Uninhibited because of the alcohol, Ten's jaw drops. He blinks, eyeing Kun first and then the hand in front of him as his cheeks turn another shade darker. There's only a second of a pause between that and when it seems to click - something shifting behind his inky eyes then, gaze going dark - but it feels like a lifetime. 

The corners of Ten's mouth tug upwards and his tongue darts out in a half-breath, mouth opening just the slightest; but Kun knows, and Ten knows, too.

When Kun slowly pushes his index finger past the soft seam of Ten's lips as he opens up, it's a familiar slick heat that he slides into. Ten's mouth feels warm and velvety, but the way Ten looks at him is what sends a shiver down Kun's spine. Ten's eyes are hazy but burn with a frightening intensity when he swirls his tongue, sucking around Kun’s finger; not looking away. Kun pushes all the way in until his knuckle meets the sharp edge of Ten's teeth, and although they're both tipsy already, it makes him feel drunk on power.

The wine glass is still balanced delicately in Ten’s right hand, his wrist slack in the air above the stove where the saucepan still putters. With his other hand, Ten grabs Kun’s wrist to hold it in place. Pulling off with a wet sound, Ten’s face splits into a wide smile as he flattens his tongue, slowly, slowly licking Kun's index finger clean of the sticky mess until nothing white remains but a tiny spot on his chin.

'Tastes good,' Ten grins. 'Thank you for reminding me that I like it.'

Kun's eyes flicker to Ten's lips, soft and shiny now, and the air around them feels so thick that he almost forgets to breathe. Maybe it's liquid courage. Maybe it's the fault of something else coursing hotly through his veins when Kun puts his other hand to Ten's hip, his waist so small underneath the flowy fabric of his shirt, and leans forward.

_’Babaaa!’_

The sudden sound makes Ten jump, gasping as he lets go of Kun's wrist and pulls away from him. Kun short-circuits as reality kicks in, mouth falling open, partly in surprise but mostly out of embarrassment.

'Baba, I'm hungryyy,' Cheng wails from her bedroom.

Kun stumbles backwards, letting his hand fall from its place at Ten's hip. 'Yeah, it's uh— dinner's ready!' he shouts back, turned toward the hallway, and stares into the floor as he takes a deep breath to stifle the heat gyrating deep in his stomach. 

Kun can hear Ten breathing unevenly behind him, but it's not much comfort. It's all so damn stupid and confusing anyway, and Kun doesn't even know what he wants from this. But Ten makes him forget whatever adult responsibilities he’s supposed to abide by, teasing out a juvenile boldness in its place. It's just so easy to fall for when Ten looks like that, moves like that, speaks like that, is like that.

Dinner passes slowly between the three of them. There's a heaviness in the shadows of the room that makes Kun think of cabin pressure and rainy flights. Besides, they made way too much food.

After they've dragged their way through two servings each and Cheng has licked the last trace of plum from her plate, Kun takes her to bed. They go through their usual routine - Cheng brushing her teeth in the mirror while Kun combs her hair, washing her face, and then climbing into bed.

Burrowing her face into the pillow, Cheng yawns. 'No story tonight, please.'

'Oh, okay,' Kun frowns, putting the book back on her desk. 'You feeling okay?'

'Yes, just tired. Can you stay here until I fall asleep?' she murmurs, eyes closed already.

'Of course, sweetie.’ Kun smiles and strokes some wispy hairs away from her face, settling in more comfortably beside her on the bed. 

While Cheng breathes in and out, Kun closes his eyes and tries to relax; the events of the day taking their toll on his energy as he he drifts halfway to sleep, or maybe he really does doze off, but then Cheng's small voice calls out to him again, and he flinches awake. 

'Baba,' she says softly. 'Is Ten going to stay?'

‘What? No, he's going home after this. I'm gonna take him there, but first I'll stay here with you, so don't worry,' Kun reassures her, patting the blanket. 

'No,' she continues, sounding a little frustrated. 'I mean, what about tomorrow? And the day after that?'

Kun blinks once, twice, three times, before the gravity of the question fully lands. ‘I don't know,' he fumbles. 'Maybe not tomorrow, but sometime after that, yeah, he'll come back. If that's okay with you.'

Cheng doesn't say anything for a moment, like she's taking in his words very seriously. 'But _my_ play friends don't get to visit every day,' she says then, speaking slowly as she tries to wrap her head around it.

'Well,' Kun inhales, struggling to think of a good explanation to her when he just wishes Ten would explain it to him first. 'You know how you have special friends at kindergarten, who you play with more often than the others, and want to be with all the time? Sometimes adults do that too. Do you understand? Ten is Baba's special friend.'

Cheng thinks long and quietly again, until she nods. 'Okay. I understand,' she says and turns over to the other side, the fluffy duvet pulled up to her chin. 'I'm gonna sleep now,' she yawns - and then she does.

After tucking Cheng into bed, Kun finds Ten out on the veranda, leaning against the linen backrest of the armchair. Trying to get a read on where they’re at from the earlier awkwardness, Kun smiles carefully as he knocks on the doorframe. But Ten looks completely peaceful with his knees pulled close to his chest. He seems to be gazing out at the garden - where flecks of sunlight filter through the tree crowns at the foot of the veranda, chasing each other like sunkissed cats in the grass - or at the sky, or maybe at some other thing, invisible to Kun’s eyes.

‘Hey,’ Kun breathes. Standing behind the armchair, he reaches forward to twirl a strand of Ten’s long hair around his finger - its glossy finish gleaming like oil in the evening light, and it uncoils again, escaping his grasp like a string of silk. ‘What are you thinking so hard about? I can hear it from the other room.’

‘I’m not thinking,’ Ten sighs. ‘I’m just contemplating.’

‘I hope it’s good things that you’re contemplating then,’ Kun offers, chest heavy with something like an overdue apology, but even apologising feels like an unnecessary overstep that would only disturb the still air.

Tilting his head, Ten peers back at Kun intently with a naked kind of honesty - his posture relaxing somewhat when he turns to reach for Kun’s hand. Ten’s slender fingers are cool to the touch, and Kun wishes they weren’t. The aspen leaves shiver and rustle in the wind that carries the lightness of Ten’s voice away with it.

‘It always is with you.’

Asking not the question he wants to ask, but the only one he can, Kun swallows his heart and smiles, faintly. 

'Can I walk you home?'

July arrives with a gentle ease out of the corner of his eye, breathing life into the lupines that line the hills. They bloom in swatches of pinks, purpure and cobalt blue. Ten always liked lupines. He reminded Kun of this the first time they walked this new route to Ten's home - the one past the park and the basketball court where teens huff and play well into the summer night, disturbing the layers of tightly packed dust with their reddening sneakers. And though Kun still knew this, he had let Ten remind him anyway.

The sky's pale blue colour blends into a warmer shade along the horizon. Slowly at first, and then all at once, until every blue brushstroke is exchanged for a mellow orange that hangs warm and heavy above their heads, casting long shadows at their feet. They walk hand in hand beneath the lush overhang of the trees, listening to the choirs of cicadas in the bushes.

It's nice just to listen sometimes. It's nice to hold Ten's hand, too, and spend some time together, uninterrupted by adult anxieties.

From June to July, and from Kun's home to Ten's, he forms a habit of watching Ten's profile as they walk side by side. Kun studies the curve of his jaw and the softness of his cheeks. Ten is so beautiful like that, it almost kind of hurts. He'll run a hand sort of nervously through his hair sometimes - especially after saying something earnest - and Kun will pretend not to notice just so Ten will keep doing it.

Tonight is none different. Ten talks about his next project at work, about photography techniques and the gallery exhibition downtown. He speaks softly, like he's getting lost inside his own little head.

Kun squeezes around his hand. 'Do you wanna go?'

'Hm?' Ten looks up and blinks, a little dazed. 'Oh, they're closing the exhibition tomorrow. Sorry.'

Kun hums, and considers this. 'Let me know next time then, and we can go if you'd like to. Bring Cheng, too, I'm sure she'd enjoy herself. Or we can go just the two of us.'

Ten nods and smiles contentedly at Kun, his feline eyes crinkling at the sides, and then he turns his head forward again, exposing the delicate slope of his nose and lips. The cicadas sing on, and Kun looks around at the dense green of the hills and the faint glow of streetlights lighting the way down the avenue. Ten's skin is lit orange by the setting sun, and Kun squints in the half-light. 

For a twitch of a second, he’s unsure of which Ten he's looking at; past and present blending into one in the familiarity of his features, and it frightens Kun. There's no way of telling the future or knowing what comes next. But right here - hand in hand and side by side - everything is perfect. So he stops, blinks, carves the moment into his memory and sets it gently to the side with all the rest.

Ten glances at him then, and he smiles, and Kun knows that by the end of the summer he will either fall in love again or lose everything.

They reach the foot of Ten's street faster than he would have liked, and by this time it's starting to get dark. Kun slows down, pausing by the thorny hedge that separates the walkway from the apartment complex that rises out of the ground on the other side. A few shabby looking cars are parked on the side of the street, but besides that there is no sign of anyone else around but the two of them.

'So…' says Ten.

'So,' Kun repeats, something sour in the back of his throat.

A gust of wind pierces through the humid air and makes the hairs at the back of his neck prickle. Ten visibly shivers, and grabbing Kun’s hands he holds them tightly in front of his own chest. Kun looks up at the black bedroom window of Ten's empty apartment. 

Like a nurse's needle jabbed in your shoulder for a good reason, it shouldn't hurt, but it does anyway.

‘It’s okay, you know,’ Kun tells him. ‘You don’t have to.’

It’s a cheap offer, but it’s all he has.

Kun knows that Ten can't invite him up; that he's not ready to let him in like that in case worse comes to worst. Likewise, Ten knows to skip the pleasantries when Kun will be hurt by it however way the excuse is dressed up. All this time, and it turns out they still know each other. Instinctively, intuitively, and inside out.

‘I know,’ Ten sighs. ‘But it’s not that.’

‘Then what?’

Ten looks up from where their cold fingers are intertwined like roots by his sternum. He gives Kun that look again; the one that disarms him completely, real and piercing and full of intent.

’Promise me that it will work out this time,’ Ten demands. ’Tell me that I won’t regret it.’

Kun feels Ten’s eyes flicker to his lips, and he knows this look, too, though neither of them move. But it’s an impossible reassurement that Ten is asking for —this promise— a burden too big for Kun to carry alone.

’You know I can’t promise that.’

Ten feigns a smile, something hollow pulling at the corner of his mouth as he lets go of Kun’s hands. ‘I know. I’m sorry,’ he says, ducking his head down like he’s slipping away all over again, and the action alarms Kun.

‘So what, can’t we try anyway?’ It’s supposed to be a genuine question, but it comes out more like a plea. ‘After all, you keep coming back to me, Ten. That has to mean something.’

Ten lets out a laugh, but it sounds like it gets stuck somewhere in his throat. He runs a hand through his hair, and the wind blows it right back into his face.

‘Kun,’ he says. ‘If you keep coming back to me, but you always run away, doesn’t that mean something too? Maybe that’s what the universe is really trying to tell us. It didn’t matter that I loved you to pieces once, or that I believed so blindly and chewed it all up, thinking, this is it, he’s the one. It didn’t matter because _you_ left, and I was fucking crushed. So how can I possibly go on from here if this doesn’t last?’ Ten pauses to take a shaky breath, and his voice comes out tight next, threatening to break. ‘If I feel the way that I do for you and that _still_ isn’t enough, what can I learn from that other than to lose hope in all good things?’

In the canopy of the trees above them, the birds have stopped singing. Maybe they fell asleep as the evening slipped into nighttime. It’s so quiet here on the small street to Ten’s apartment, just a stone’s throw away from the wider road where the sound of cars and commotion drones on, so black and empty in Ten’s bedroom window, and Kun wishes he could make the birds sing and the lights beam and all the right answers appear.

But there is no such thing - just the streetlight flickering above, unhelpful and incomplete.

Kun shrugs undecidedly, shakes the cold out of his spine. ‘I don’t know, Ten. I wish I did.’

Ten sighs and tilts his head. He gives Kun a pitiful look, and his palm is neither warm nor entirely comforting when Ten reaches to caress Kun’s cheek. ‘No, of course you don’t know. So treat me carefully. Do you understand? Don’t let me fall for you again if it will all come apart.’

Right between two tendons in his left shoulder is where the second needle goes. 

Kun nods. It would hurt less if what Ten says weren’t true, but it is. He used to think that they were perfect for each other. Destined, even. Way back when, those kinds of things teased the blush out of Ten so easily. _Star-crossed lovers. Tied by a red thread. In this life and the next,_ Kun would whisper into the warm crease of Ten’s neck, and Ten would whine with his face buried in the pillows until Kun rolled him over and pressed kisses against his burning cheeks.

Maybe they watched too many romcoms. Maybe they were gullible. But Kun never actively stopped believing that they were meant to be, even as distance and time forced them apart. Perhaps they just weren’t ready then.

The wind tugs on Ten’s jacket.

‘It’s cold out, you should get inside.’ Kun smiles weakly and pulls him in for a hug. ‘Goodnight, Ten.’

**  
III.  
**  
‘Change of plans,’ the shrill voice calls through the static. ‘The publisher want it out before the book fair, so I need you done by the last of August. Can you do that for me?’

Kun pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Yeah,’ he groans. ‘Yeah, okay. Shit.’

The line goes silent for a second. ‘Take an aspirin, Kun,’ his editor sighs before she hangs up. 

Groaning, he lets the phone fall out of his hand as he turns over on the bed. On the bedside table, the digital time reads 5 a.m. Fucking Europeans, Kun sighs. 

By the next time he wakes up, the sun shines bright and blinding into the room. He must have forgotten to pull the curtains together when he came home late last night from the long walk back from Ten’s apartment. Ten’s words still linger in his mind. They echoe more faintly each time that he tries to grab the thought with his hands to see it clearly. To understand. 

_‘Don’t let me fall for you again if it will all come apart.’_

But how could he promise such a thing? How could he possibly know what will come of whatever they’re doing? Which is equally unclear in itself, when Kun tries to make sense of it. It sure _feels_ like he’s dating Ten, but he knows he isn’t actually. It’s just wishful thinking. Being around him feels nice - and maybe they don’t need to label it yet, like Ten had said. But even one little word of validation would be a heavy weight off his shoulders, just to remind Kun that he isn’t making it all up in his head. 

Because really, what are they? Pseudo coworkers? Old friends? Lovers in past or present? Kun drags the other pillow over his head to muffle a loud, drawn out groan which he must have held in since the start of the summer. 

Just then, someone knocks on the door, and Cheng peeks through. ‘Good morning,’ she smiles as she climbs into bed, laying down beside him with her head on his chest.

‘Hey there,’ he sighs fondly, wrapping his arm around her little shoulder and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. ‘Good morning. You slept well?’

‘Mhm,’ she yawns. 

Kun strokes her hair absentmindedly and looks to the side, where one half of the bed lies empty. Ten should be there. It’s the obvious answer to every question that’s running through Kun’s mind - crystal clear and resounding, said dreamily with a shrug, off the shoulder so naturally, with no need to be explained. Ten should be there, and Kun won’t let anything pull them apart this time. 

Later while clearing the table after breakfast, Kun asks Cheng what she would like to do today. 

‘Watercolours!’ she squeals gleefully. ‘Wanna draw watercolours with Ten!’

So maybe it’s not so crazy of Kun to imagine a space for Ten in his life after all, when it’s right there waiting for him. 

‘Well, you look busted.’

Ten gives him an amused once over the second Kun opens the door for him, which splits into a satisfied grin when Kun rolls his eyes. 

‘Why, thank you,’ Kun says. With lopsided hair, puffy eyes and shaving cream on one side of his face but not the other, it’s probably true. ‘It’s because you interrupted my morning routine.’

Ten slides out of his shoes and follows Kun inside. ‘Morning? It’s eleven o’clock.’

‘Yeah, well you interrupted my evening routine last night, too.’

Ten pushes Kun’s back playfully, and Kun is glad to be facing away so Ten doesn’t see the dopey smile on his face. Cheng is sitting at her crafts table and scratching away with her crayons on a coloured paper, head in the clouds. With a hand towel slung around his neck, Kun walks back into the bathroom to finish shaving. Ten lingers by the door before stepping inside and sitting down on the edge of the bathtub. 

Kun eyes him in the mirror as he wets the razor under the tap. ‘What about you?’ Kun hums, careful not to move his jaw so much under the sharp blade. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Not really. I was up thinking.’

‘Thinking? Or contemplating?’

‘Maybe a bit of both,’ Ten smiles. He drums the pads of his fingers against the flat surface of the bathtub under his palms, looking pensive as always. Then, a wrinkle forms between Ten’s eyebrows and he stands up. ‘Hey, not like that. Let me do it.’

Kun freezes with the razor right against the edge of his jaw where it meets the soft skin of his throat. Ten appears at Kun’s side and takes it out of his hands with delicate fingers. 

‘You never did it right,’ Ten chides him. With his back pressed against the sink, Ten tilts Kun’s chin with one hand and holds him still there as he begins to drag the head of the razor down in neat lines, pushing the white foam aside. 

Kun’s heartbeat flutters at the intimacy of the gesture, and he wonders if Ten can feel the way his pulse jumps beneath the skin. For all Kun cares, there might just as well be nothing else existing in the universe outside the bathroom door but the two of them, right here. Only Ten’s gentle hands against his face, Ten’s perfume filling his senses, Ten chiding him just to make it right again. 

Instinctively, Kun’s hands fall to Ten’s hips. 

Suddenly, Ten stiffens - his back straightening into a rigid bow as his hand freezes over Kun’s jugular. Ten’s eyes dart to Kun, alert like a rabbit’s in headlights. 

‘What?’ Kun breathes. ‘Ten, what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ Ten mumbles, face going blank as he resumes the shaving.

Grabbing hold of his wrist, Kun stops him. ‘You’re trembling,’ he says, slow and hushed so to not frighten him. 

Ten swallows and breathes out through his nose. ‘It’s fine,’ he says again. ‘Really, it’s fine.’ 

But then he pushes Kun back with a light hand against his chest and slinks past, disappearing out the bathroom, leaving Kun alone with his baffled reflection in the mirror - and it’s not fine at all. 

They don’t talk about it. Giving space, isn’t that what people do? Ten huddles up beside Cheng in the living room, and Kun spends the day on the perimeter of their little bubble, always watching but not wanting to disturb. 

There are other moments like these as the last of the summer days pass, their time together running through Kun’s fingers like water. It seems that just when he thought they’d come to understand each other, though the agreement was unspoken - _it’s so lovely here with you, let’s stay a little longer_ \- an invisible thread snaps and the drapery all comes falling down, revealing nothing inside the silhouette but air. 

Some nights it feels just like normal - the new normal that they’ve spun together - and Kun forgets all his worries. There are all the usual pieces, like the three of them making dinner together, two types of dessert, and long walks down the neighbourhood in the golden hour. Ten smiles sometimes when he doesn’t think Kun is looking, but it’s always evident in Ten’s eyes when he glances back at Kun over his shoulder, and Kun keeps these snapshots close to his heart. 

But in between there are other instances etched into place, like sticks in the cogwheel machinery. Kun might ask Ten to go pick a book for Kun to read to Cheng as a goodnight story while he finishes washing the dishes, and Ten’s face will pale before he catches himself in the act. Or it’s the lingering touch of a hand at Ten’s lower back, a sudden movement, or something that Cheng mentions in passing; and Ten will flinch, and Kun doesn’t know why. 

So, the days pass, the nights pass, and the last week of August arrives with a dark thunderstorm hanging heavy in the air with static, threatening to spark at any moment. 

They huddle up on the couch together once Cheng falls asleep. The door to the veranda is slightly ajar, and in spills chilly air that cools the floorboards and makes the candle wicks shudder on the table. Ten shivers under the blanket pulled up to his chest and nestles into the cushions. Pulling him close, Kun sighs as he sits down and reaches for the TV remote. 

‘What do you wanna watch?’ Kun asks, flicking through endless rows of Netflix titles. ‘In the mood for a horror movie?’ He selects one that sparks his interest and glances at Ten who squints cutely at the faraway screen.

‘Mm, maybe. Does it have a bad ending? I don’t like those,’ Ten grumbles. 

Chuckling, he reaches to scratch Ten’s head. ‘Isn’t that what makes them exciting, not knowing?’ Kun laughs and pulls him close, bumping against the popcorn bowl in Ten’s lap in the process, kernels jumping everywhere. 

In the end, he lets Ten chose what to watch. Ten settles on an 80’s flick about gory aliens and spaceship carnage, which they had watched once during university. It feels like old times, but maybe that’s not the point when it simply feels good for what it is. They know most of the jumpscares, but that doesn’t stop Ten from shrieking loudly at the iconic chase scene towards the end, and Kun has to cover Ten’s mouth to stop him from waking up Cheng upstairs. Ten giggles hotly into his palm, panting, and Kun’s breath hitches before he pulls back again. 

The final suspenseful moments of the movie come with disgusting sound effects as the alien’s body rips apart from within, contorting unnaturally until it twitches one last time. The hairs at the back of Kun’s neck stand up in response, or maybe that’s the static tingle of the storm outside. 

Beside him, Ten exhales with a groan. ‘This is the worst part,’ he whines, shooting Kun a look. When Kun doesn’t move, Ten kicks his feet against his lap. ‘That means you should cuddle me, dummy.’

Kun’s face flushes like a teenager’s under Ten’s watchful smirk, but he quickly does as he’s told, half lying down beside Ten with his arms around him. ‘Sorry, I just don’t want to overstep,’ Kun mumbles. Hesitating, he pauses, but decides he might as well address the elephant in the room. ‘I…can we talk about it?’ 

Ten sighs painfully and shrinks into the couch. ‘Can we not? It’s nice like this.’

‘Can we please? I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around you, and I don’t want that.’

‘Eggshells? _You’re_ walking on eggshells?’ Ten’s scoffs, twisting around to frown at Kun. 

Taken aback, Kun blinks. ‘Yes? You’ve been acting weird lately, I…’

‘Oh, I’m acting weird, I see how it is.’ Ten beckons forward, slinking through Kun’s arms to sit up straight on the couch with his back to Kun. ‘No, you’re the one acting weird.’ 

‘Ten, Ten, Ten,’ Kun whispers, sitting up and hugging him from behind with his chin pressed against Ten’s small shoulder. ‘Baby, please don’t cry,’ Kun coos when he feels Ten begin to quiver, the sound of snivels filling the room.

‘See, even just that. _Baby?_ Really?’ Ten whispers in an exasperated tone. 

‘M’sorry, we can take it slow with those things. I don’t have to say that word yet if you don’t want me to.’

‘It’s not about what I _want_. I want lots of things, I want you, I want this. But how do I reconcile that with what I’m scared of?’ 

Kun snakes his hand around Ten’s waist to hold his hand, squeezing it reassuringly while he carefully considers Ten’s words. ‘I don’t know, not unless you tell me,’ Kun mumbles into his neck. ‘So just tell me what you’re scared of.’

‘Him!’ Ten blurts out. ‘Your husband!’

‘What? My ex?’ Kun does a double take, frowning. ‘I don’t understand, that was years ago.’

Ten inhales shakely, holding Kun’s hands even tighter when he speaks, and it all runs loose then, like a waterfall.

‘Three years is not that long,’ Ten shakes his head, face still turned away. Between the snivels, he sounds hesitant to open up, but then he does, and Kun has no way of expecting what comes out next.

‘Cheng talks about him sometimes with me, don’t you know? About other daddy. How confusing musn’t that be for her, when I sit in his place at the dinner table?’ Ten says, shrugging and shaking his head all at once. ‘He’s everywhere in this house, forever intertwined with your lives, and that’s fine. But I hate feeling like I’m walking on eggshells around you, like I’ll say the wrong thing or pick the wrong cutlery and awaken a terrible ghost in the house. Like he never left, and I’m acting as the third wheel to an invisible person who I never even met. So where does that leave me?’

In shock, Kun pulls away. ‘I don’t understand where this is coming from,’ is all he can think of to say.

Ten frees himself of Kun’s embrace and turns around. Now Kun sees the big tears that have begun to trickle down his cheeks, how his nose has gone pink, and all he wants to do is hold Ten closer.

Ten looks at him, eyes dark and pleading. ‘You never used to call me by that. So is that what you called him?’ he asks, voice thick with pain. ‘Do you touch me like you touched him? Did he feel better underneath you? If you’d kiss me, is it me you’re thinking of? I— hate how you’re divorced, but I still just feel like your mistress.’

The words wash over him like a bucket of ice water - disarming and painful - though not because Kun is hurt, but because Ten is hurting. 

Jaw falling open at Ten’s confession, Kun struggles to collect himself. ‘Ten, you’re not…a homewrecker. I’m so sorry that I made you feel that way, I didn’t know. But I’m past all that. When I ask you to stay over, it’s because I want _you_ here. It’s not about anyone else. Just us. You belong here, with me.’

‘Do I?’ Ten laughs. He rubs his nose with the back of his hand, but Kun reaches for a tissue from underneath the table and wipes Ten’s snotty cupid’s bow for him. Ten doesn’t stop him, instead resting his hands on Kun’s thighs. 

Ten sighs wistfully. ‘It’s selfish of me, I know. But I wish I had known you before all of this… Not the way that we did then, but some other way. You have such a busy life with work and responsibilities and a fucking kid, Kun. I mean, I love her, but she’s not mine, is she?’

Kun puts the tissue to the side and faces Ten, who looks at him very seriously. 

‘I can’t just step into your life and mess all of this up now that you finally settled. Look at me, Kun, seriously. I haven’t even unpacked the boxes from months ago when I moved in, and I lived on coffee and sugar until you started feeding me! But suddenly I’m fit to be a father for somebody else’s kid? It doesn’t make sense.’ 

Kun takes Ten’s hands in his again. ‘You’re not selfish for thinking that. But you’re also not the mess that you think you are. You’re talented and smart and…really cool in a way that I’ll never be,’ Kun laughs, and Ten snorts in response, glancing at him through the hair that’s fallen over his eyes. 

‘You’re right,’ Ten smirks. ‘You’ll never be as cool as me.’

Kun smiles. ‘No, I won’t. Cheng thinks so too, you know. She really loves you.’ 

‘You think so?’ Ten pouts. 

‘I know so.’ 

Outside sounds the rumble of thunder, low but far away. Ten’s gaze falls down into his lap for a moment, at their hands where they hold each other close, before he looks up from under his eyelashes.

‘Qian Kun,' he says. 'Can you please take me home now, and kiss me when we get there?’ 

It’s dark when they step outside. The silhouette of a smouldering cloud is on the horizon, like a muddy shadow mixed into the purple of the twilight sky. The forecast had predicted rain and flashes of lightning, but there is only tense static in the humid air. They walk hand in hand - quicker than they’ve ever done before - skipping steps here and there and pushing against each other, laughing. 

The pink lupines that paint the hills are on their last breath, soon to make way for something new in the black soil. Their floral scent is heavy in the air, and as the buzzing streetlights tinker over their heads, Kun thinks that everything is almost perfect. 

Ten glances mischievously at him the closer they get. ‘Are you scared?’ he teases. 

‘Why would I be scared?’ Kun laughs. 

‘I don’t know, I’m feeling dangerous,’ Ten smiles. 

Whereas only Ten’s bedroom window used to be black before, every light in every window of the tall apartment building has gone out now. Kun doesn’t want to check what time it is, but it must be late. He shivers a little in the cool air as they come to a slow halt outside the gate. 

‘Can we stay out here for a bit longer?’ Ten whines, pulling Kun in closer. ‘I don’t want to go inside just yet.’

Kun wraps his arms around Ten’s shoulders, humming against his hair. ‘Anything,’ he smiles, kissing his head. 

They stand like that for a little while. The night is long and dark, and here it is peaceful. Quiet, except for the thunderstorm in the distance. And perhaps it is Ten who is scared, standing here between two worlds. 

Sighing, Ten tilts his head up to look at Kun. ‘I like you,’ Ten says and cups his face, delicately articulating each syllable as if it was brittle. ‘I like you and I know you, Qian Kun. I know you and I like you.’

Kun’s heart swells with love. ‘Me too,’ he smiles through the crinkles that form at his eyes, a tingly feeling of fondness and adoration spreading through his body like a fever.

Ten’s eyes twinkle. ‘This is the part where you kiss me.’ 

And Kun does. 

Ten’s lips are just as soft as Kun had remembered them when he presses a kiss to Ten’s mouth, and then another, and another. Ten smiles into it, craning his head to better kiss Kun back, and it feels like coming home. 

In the chilly air, Ten hands are cold where they cup Kun’s face, but when he opens up, his breath is hot, a warm tongue darting out between his lips. As they kiss, Kun eases Ten’s mouth open wider with a growing hunger that Ten only responds to with lethal eagerness. 

Suddenly Ten is grabbing hold of Kun’s elbows and pushing him backwards. Kun panics for a second before his back hits something hard, as Ten pushes him against a car parked on the side of the street. Thankfully the alarm doesn’t go off right away, possibly awakening the whole neighbourhood. But then Ten is there again, pressing up against him. Kun would rather not be found dry humping someone in the middle of the street at night - but this seems like exactly where it’s going to end if Ten is steering the ship. 

Closing the distance between them, Ten leans in to press a kiss to the corner of Kun’s mouth. 

‘We don’t have to go inside,’ Ten mumbles hotly against Kun’s skin while slowly descending, leaving kisses down his jaw to where it meets the crook of his neck. There Ten buries his nose, breathing in as he laps at the skin and Kun moans, bucking shamefully against Ten’s leg pressed up between his thighs. 

Kun’s hand finds the back of Ten’s head instinctively, and despite the desire coursing hotly through his blood, he tugs Ten’s head back. 

‘We’re not nineteen anymore,’ Kun huffs and playfully shakes Ten’s head to put some sense in there. ‘People live here. Families.’ 

Ten pulls away from the hand fisted through his long hair and leans forward to kiss Kun square on the chin. ‘Can’t we pretend for tonight?’ he counters. Ten turns his head to playfully bite at Kun’s throat - sharp teeth nipping at the skin with enough intent to leave marks in the morning. 

‘Someone’s gonna see us.’ He pulls Ten back again, rougher now. ‘And then they’re going to kick you out of your apartment.’

‘So then I’ll just move in with you,’ Ten grins. 

‘You’re impossible.’

‘I think you’ll find that I’m highly agreeable.’

In Kun’s exasperated state, Ten twirls him around and presses him flat against the hood of the car. Kun gasps - first at the cold surface against his right cheek, and then at the unmistakable hardness now pressing against the cleft of his ass - and makes a half-hearted attempt at stifling a moan at the feeling. 

‘So, get in the car,’ Ten whispers into his ear.

‘Wait, you had a car this whole time? This is too much new information for one night,’ Kun groans. 

‘Of course I have a car,’ Ten laughs. ‘I just like you walking me. Is that a crime now? Liking you?’

It’s not a crime, or if it is, they’re equal accomplices. 

Fucking in a car is probably some kind of crime though, but then they’re accomplices in that as well. Ten fishes up his keys from his pockets and they scramble to get inside, grinding desperately on each other and unable to stop making out. Ten pulls forward the passenger seat, but it quickly becomes apparent that even that doesn’t help much. It’s a cramped space and still kind of cold inside, but then Ten is there again and none if it matters. 

Ten falls against the seat in the back of the car and Kun settles on his lap, licking into his mouth with growing desperation. Ten rolls his hips but Kun’s head hits the ceiling with a loud thump, making him beckon forward in pain. Ten can’t stop laughing with Kun’s face buried in his neck, patting his head and cooing at him like a baby until Kun slaps his hands away.

‘This was a bad idea, I told you,’ Kun pouts, still feeling at the bump on his head. 

‘It’s a great idea,’ Ten giggles. 

He strokes Kun’s cheek and kisses him again, but tantalisingly slow now. They take their time and Kun melts with it, melts with how giddy he feels. He doesn’t even realise that he’s grinding on Ten’s straining hard-on until Ten grabs his hips, pulling him down roughly with greater precision so that their crotches aline. 

‘Fuck,’ Ten gasps out, a moan escaping into Kun’s open mouth.

Kun laughs breathlessly in response and cups the back of Ten’s neck, leaning back just to look at his pleasured expression when he circles his hips, rocking forward to chase Ten’s sounds. 

Ten’s jaw falls slack and he lets his head fall against the headrest while he looks at Kun through hooded eyes. Ten smirks, and Kun smiles back. There’s so much they could say, but which they don’t - like _we fit so well together you and I,_ or _I want you in every way you’ll have me._ But there’s no need to voice these things when Ten looks at him the way he does; eyes like inky mirrors of the starlit sky. For tonight, that’s enough. 

‘Let me suck you off,’ Kun mumbles, already climbing out of Ten’s lap. 

_’Kun,’_ is all Ten says.

He falls to his knees behind the forward-tilted passenger seat and pulls Ten’s legs far apart to make more room. Ten lets him, watching on as if powerless. Kun feels his head go stuffy, all blood rushing elsewhere as his hands fumble with Ten’s belt. He manages, finally, and tugs the waistband of Ten’s pants and underwear down to his thighs - just enough to set his erection free. 

Kun nearly salivates at the sight of Ten, half hard and curved against his abdomen. And like a sinner on his knees, Kun bows forward, kissing open mouthed at the underside of Ten’s swollen cock. It feels divine, and it feels like a gift. Even at the small touch, Ten moans breathlessly. 

‘Kun,’ he repeats. ‘Kun.’

With a steadying hand at the base of Ten’s cock right above the bunched up fabric of his underwear, Kun licks a long stripe from the bottom to the top, before swallowing Ten down. He bobs his head twice, then pulls back to spit on the head for a better glide. A string of saliva connects the swell of his bottom lip with Ten’s dick, and he feels Ten’s gaze flicker to it. 

Kun laughs quietly, bewildered by Ten’s beauty, the feel of him, the taste of him. Fisting his cock, Kun distributes the slick saliva down Ten’s length before leaning down again and taking him in his mouth. 

Ten always liked his lips. Kun wonders if he likes him this way, too, flushed and kneeling between his spread legs in the dead of night. But he doesn’t have to wonder when Ten fists Kun’s hair with a groan and tugs his head sideways, pushing him down sloppily on his dick. It slides down Kun’s throat as Ten holds him there for an unknowably long moment. The weighted feeling of him filling out against the roof of Kun’s mouth and the flat of his tongue makes Kun hum around a sordid moan. The vibrations has Ten groaning as he pulls Kun up again. 

It burns in his throat and at his scalp, but Kun just coughs up spit onto Ten’s clothed thigh with an amused smile. 

Kun forgets if he’s supposed to say something - instead, he looks up at Ten in absolute adoration, smiling as he swallows him down again. He works Ten into a moaning mess like this, with a firm hand stroking down the length where his swollen lips won’t reach. 

‘Enough,’ Ten moans eventually. His nails drag harshly against Kun’s scalp when he pulls him off his cock by the hair. But then he leans forward, capturing Kun’s slick lips in an impossibly sweet kiss. Ten must taste his own pre cum on Kun’s tongue like this, but he doesn’t seem to care. 

‘Wanna fuck you,’ Ten breathes. ‘Can I fuck you, pretty please?’

Kun smiles into the kiss. ‘Yeah,’ he nods feverishly, and Kun’s heart pounds so hard inside his chest that he swears he can hear the rhythm at his temples. 

Reaching forward into the front of the car, Ten opens the glove department and pulls out a packet of lube and some condoms.

‘Why, aren’t you prepared,’ Kun snorts while kicking off his shoes. ‘Do you take all your boys out here to fuck them?’

Ten pushes on his shoulder until Kun is lying down with his back flat against the seats. ‘Only the pretty ones,’ he smiles. 

Settling over Kun with his knees on either side, Ten helps tear off his jacket and drag his pants down, leaving Kun in just his boxers and hoodie underneath. The chilly air fans across his naked skin, and it makes him shiver. On his back like this, Kun notices how the windows have gone a little foggy from condensation. He laughs out at the absurdity of the situation, but then Ten interrupts his train of thought as he bends down between Kun’s thighs - and Kun blinks - momentarily stunned by Ten’s beauty.

It’s not comfortable with his head bumping against the plastic lining of the window, but half sitting, half lying down, it still feels like a personal heaven when Ten sinks to his knees to mouth at the fabric over Kun’s bulge. Ten looks up - his eyes seemingly reflecting a shard of the above street lamp’s light like a cat’s for a brief moment - but then they cut to black again, now dark with mirth and trickery. Smirking, Ten slowly kisses around his outline and down Kun’s inner thigh, and then he bites, _hard,_ into the soft, plush skin. 

Kun yelps, kicking his feet out. But Ten quickly shushes him with a syrupy smile and peppers the area with small kisses. He palms Kun’s dick through his boxers, pulling the waistband down, and Kun’s dick swings free. He doesn’t have time to think before Ten’s hands are there again, stroking him to full hardness with a practiced flick of the wrist. 

It shouldn’t be this easy to drag him to the edge, but it is, because it always is with Ten. 

‘It’s gonna smell in the car,’ Kun points out, out of nowhere. 

Chuckling, Ten pulls back to rip the rectangular packet of lube open with his teeth. ‘Yeah,’ he nods. ‘Yeah, it will. And I’ll think of you like this every time I get in my car from now on.’

‘Shut up,’ Kun snorts. ‘You’re such a freak.’

Ten’s lubed up fingers glisten in the dim light when he leans down again. ‘Mm,’ he hums, putting one hand firmly at the back of Kun’s right leg and pushing it forward to his chest. ‘But you like ‘em freaky,’ he smirks into Kun’s mouth and pushes a slick finger into his hole. 

Eyes falling back into his head, Kun’s breath hitches at the sudden prodding feeling. Ten pulls back, circling Kun’s rim with the slick pads of his fingers and spreading the lube around before he pushes back in again, angled upwards in a way that has Kun gasping for air.

‘I haven’t—’ Kun chokes out. ‘In a long time.’

‘I’ll be good to you,’ Ten promises sweetly as he adds a second finger.

‘Oh my god.’ Kun moans airily, trying to relax around him when Ten scissors his fingers, slow but deep inside. He feels his cock twitch in response when Ten hits a particular spot. Precum dribbles onto the hem of Kun’s hoodie, leaving a wet spot that he’ll surely regret to be reminded of in the morning.

Ten works him open with heartwarming patience, fucking Kun on two fingers for the longest time - or maybe he just likes watching Kun come apart under his spell. It’s a dull pressure that sends shivers down his spine, but it’s not enough, not until Ten presses the back of his leg even higher up - and the new angle has Kun seeing stars. Ten slips in a third finger seamlessly, fingerfucking his hole with a slick sound, but Kun doesn’t care. Eyes closed, he submits to the feeling, tries to chase the broken rhythm and moaning out loudly before Ten has to quiet him down with a languid kiss. It should be embarrassing, but if Ten’s flushed smirk is anything to judge by, he likes him this way. 

Tilting his head, Ten peers darkly at him. ‘You know,’ he says, pulling back his fingers before pushing all three back in to the first knuckle with a squelch. ‘You’re so loose like this, I bet I could fist you.’

It’s not true - and Ten knows it - but his words still leave Kun mortified. 

‘Freak,’ Kun repeats, half laughing and half moaning. 

Ten just grins and rolls his tongue against Kun’s. ‘Let me fuck you,’ he begs. 

They scramble to get into a better position in the backseat. They try lying on top of each other across the seats, but it’s just so cramped and too many limbs to fit without falling off. Then, Ten accidentally sits down right on the buckle of the seat belt, and winces from the sharp pain; karma and all. In the end, Kun crawls back onto his lap. 

Ten sighs in a pleased manner as they settle in, the flats of his palms exploring Kun’s thighs and up his sides under the shirt. The fabric of his pants feels rough against the back of Kun’s legs, and it’s frustrating how Ten is still dressed while Kun is sitting with his ass out where anyone could see if they chose to walk by. 

But hidden underneath the oversized hoodie that reaches down to the top of his thighs like this, Ten’s cock is still out, and Kun reaches under the layers of fabric to stroke their dicks together with one spit slick hand. 

Ten moans; moans when Kun grabs the condom at the side and slides it down Ten’s cock with a tight grip; moans when Kun fists him to lube him up properly; moans when Kun raises his hips in the air and balances on his knees, before sitting down on the blunt head of Ten’s cock, rock hard as Kun sinks down ever so slowly, sliding home. 

Kun gasps at the delicious stretch, mind going blank.

Ten curses and tugs loosely on Kun’s swollen dick to help him relax while he eases down on him. They groan in unison, slowly fogging up the windows of the car. ‘Slower,’ Ten reminds him, while flicking his wrist in a way that has Kun seeing stars. 

Arching his back, Kun uses his leg muscles to pull himself up again before rolling his hips on the way down, sinking lower each time as his body makes room for Ten to fill him up. The slick sounds of lube and shameless moans fill the air, bouncing sinfully between the walls while Kun rides him, slow and then fast, hesitant and then desperate. 

Ten’s fingers rake down Kun’s back, leaving angry red marks on either side of his spine, but the pain is only a faraway sensation when he pulls Ten in by the neck for a kiss. It all feels so mind-numbingly good with his mouth on Ten, and waves of heat ripple through him with such intensity that Kun almost feels himself drifting away. 

‘I don’t mind being a homewrecker if I can have you like this,’ Ten laughs out suddenly against Kun’s mouth. He rolls his hips, meeting Kun halfway when he starts bouncing more sloppily in his lap, chasing the pleasure. ‘We could sneak away… A quickie in the laundry room. No one would know.’

‘Ten,’ Kun huffs out. ‘What are you talking about?’

Ten cranes his head to kiss down Kun’s neck, mumbling hotly against the bruised skin. ‘I’m saying I don’t care about any of it anymore. Or do you wanna play the babysitter this time?’ he asks, looking up with a dissonant innocence in his eyes despite the scandalous words. 

Kun shakes his head from side to side in an effort to hush Ten. ‘No I don’t, I just want you, Ten.’ Kun cups his face as he kisses him, languid and deep, mumbling, ‘I’ve waited long enough for that.’

A sudden upwards roll of Ten’s hips sends sparks of pleasure down Kun neck. He struggles to speak as a familiar warmth begins to coil itself tight in his groin - spreading tingles through his whole body at first, before the feeling grows smaller and smaller in size into a single, intense tightness deep inside. 

In a string of first times, Kun nearly ticks off crying during sex from the list (right below getting off in public) when Ten suddenly bucks into him at a new angle, hitting dead on his prostate again and again while whispering affectionate words into his mouth, which Kun swallow down with an insatiable hunger. 

It feels so good that he thinks he might black out from the intensity of the pleasure hitting right where it needs to, and ceaselessly so, as he rides Ten so hard that the car must shake with it. Kun fists himself with a tight grip around his dick and he fucks into his own hand at the same pace as Ten is making him bounce on his cock. The full feeling makes Kun’s eyes tear up and he moans brokenly, eyes rolling back as his orgasm hits him from out of nowhere. 

Ten fucks him through it when Kun spills hotly into his own hand, dirtying the hoodie beyond saving as he cums onto both of their laps in thick strings. Swallowing down all of Kun’s sounds, Ten licks into his mouth. Still on the last lap of his orgasm, Kun’s toes curl as the tense feeling begins to settle throughout his limbs - but then Ten spreads Kun’s pliant legs further apart, making him lean backwards toward the car seat behind, and just keeps going. 

Tears well up in Kun’s eyes again. Not from discomfort, but from the sheer intensity of Ten making Kun ride him past oversensitivity while chasing his own orgasm. But it’s worth it just to see the look on Ten’s face, with his cheeks flushed red and a hazy look in his slanted eyes, as his jaw falls slack. 

The air has become stuffy and humid inside, and Kun feels like he’s gone dumb from cumming so hard. It barely registers how loud he’s being or that Ten’s hand grips his softening dick, not until Ten’s slender fingers prod at his mouth. They’re sticky and warm with something which Kun only realises is his own release once Ten already has it scooped down his throat on two fingers, effectively shutting him up from waking the whole street.

It should be disgusting, but in the moment it doesn’t feel like it. Clouded by the rush of endorphins that flood his system in his post-orgasm daze, all Kun does is to let Ten stuff his mouth until he cums with a drawn out, high moan and a shudder. 

The aftermath is foggy. Ten gently pulls out his fingers and Kun probably looks crazy like that, with his mouth all ruined; but maybe that’s only fair, all things considered. 

‘I guess some things stay the same, after all,’ Kun smiles, still sat on his dick as he brushes a strand of hair out of Ten’s eyes.

‘Yeah.’ Ten’s eyes crinkle softly at the sides. ‘We’ve still got it.’

They sit like that for a while until Kun finds the energy to move off of him with a slight wince, and his legs feel like jello when he does. Ten’s abdomen is a mess - thick streaks of cum all over his shirt and down the side of his crotch - and they break out into laughter at the sight of it, and at everything else, really. Eventually Ten begins to clean up by disposing of the condom and wiping the place down to the best of his abilities, using a wet wipe from the front of the car. 

Kun closes his eyes for a moment, nearly drifting off when an oddly familiar noise grabs his attention with a raspy sound and a click. 

When Kun opens one eye, Ten is breathing in at the filter of the cigarette while he lights up the end with the plastic lighter in his hand. Throwing the pack of reds back into the driver’s seat, he exhales, a white cloud of smoke dissipating through his nostrils. 

Kun laughs at the sight. ‘I thought you quit smoking,’ he says, licking his lips. 

Ten glances at him with a peculiar look in his eyes; something playful but more vast than Kun can know. 

‘I did, but I keep this pack around. For old times’ sake,’ Ten smiles, adding, ‘And because it smells like sex in here.’

Waking up in Ten’s bed the next morning, tangled in fresh sheets that smell like laundry and lily of the valley, and with the warm line of Ten’s back pressed against his front, Kun thinks he’s never felt more comfortable in his life. 

He comes to slowly, feeling hungover even though he’s not. Ten stirs beside him on the bed, whimpering something softly into the pillows. Half asleep still, Kun pulls him closer with an arm around his small waist, only to find that he’s naked from the waist up. Nestling into the crook of Ten’s neck, Kun breathes in and exhales deeply, and then he blinks, perking his head up as the world suddenly comes to all at once. 

The shrill alarm on his phone has been blaring for a full 15 minutes apparently, but clearly neither of them had heard it. Kun would have overslept if it weren’t for the fact that his phone always goes off at the same time each morning at 6 a.m., although not to much help now that he slept through it, and a long walk from home, at that. Normally he’d just get up on pure routine, but Ten yawns sleepily and makes grabby hands at Kun’s turned back. 

‘Kunnie,’ he mumbles. ‘Come back.’

Kun chuckles and leans down to kiss him on the cheek. ‘I have to go before Cheng wakes up. Dad duty calls.’

Ten whines loudly with his eyes still squeezed together. ‘Why can’t you stay here and be _my_ daddy,’ he pouts. 

‘Ten,’ Kun laughs. ‘I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that. I have to go.’

Rolling over with a dramatic groan, Ten tumbles over onto his stomach and sits up, ass first. His messy hair flops down into his face when he slowly blinks at the influx of light. Kun smiles, tapping his broad thigh. 

‘See me out by the door in five minutes,’ he tells him, and stands to grab his things from the floor before heading to the bathroom. 

Doing a walk of shame isn’t something Kun would ever expect to do at his age, but if it’s always going to include a farewell kiss from a sleepy Ten - hair all over the place, and the outline of unmistakable morning wood peeking through his silk robe which has Kun wanting to fuck him bent over the kitchen table until he’s nice and pliant again - then it’s something he could get used to. 

‘Stay a little longer,’ Ten begs at the door. ‘I’ll make you coffee.’

‘You don’t have coffee. I checked.’ Kun kisses Ten’s forehead and zips up his jacket to hide the stains of the clothes underneath. ‘But you’re welcome to come over for brunch once you’ve fully woken up.’ 

Ten sighs theatrically, one hand at his waist and the other on the doorframe, before he gives in. ‘Okay, okay, I’ll come. Go now, I have to drink invisible coffee and make myself beautiful for my date.’

‘Oh, you have a date? Must be a lucky guy.’

‘Yes, you should remind him of that. ‘I’ll see you later, Kun.’

Kun smiles as he leaves, and he smiles on the whole walk home - past the parks and the villas in the morning sun, feeling so light that he could almost fly. Luckily Cheng is still asleep when he sneaks back into the house, tiptoeing his way into the kitchen like a teenager. She awakens a while later once the smell of pancakes finds its way to the upper floor of the house, climbing down the stairs with a grumbling stomach and a big smile. And when Ten rings the doorbell, the pile of crepes are already stacked high in a perfectly assembled pancake cake to Cheng’s absolute delight. 

They eat out on the veranda for once, slicing soft bananas onto their plates and basking in the sun while the summer weather is still kind to them. Ten kisses Kun on the cheek when Cheng is turned away, and drizzles extra honey on her pancakes when he thinks Kun isn’t looking (he is).

The last days of the season go by, but in the end, it doesn’t feel like a loss. The weather shifts just a little, and other winds come blowing through the aspen leaves in the garden. Other clouds drift by and other nights pass, but the change doesn’t bother him when Ten is at his side. 

Standing in the kitchen one evening with the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, Kun balances the phone between his shoulder and his ears while he cooks. 

‘They loved it, did you see the local news?’ says his editor through the line, having called to congratulate him on the cookbook being published, after a long two years of working together. It’s a good feeling, but a strange on as well, to see it all come into fruition. ‘Oh, oh, and did you read the interview yet?’

‘Not yet,’ Kun hums, eyeing the stack of magazines on the dinner table that Ten had brought over from work. He bites his lip as he thinks for a moment, before speaking again. ‘Hey, uh, when you come over next month, I’d like you to meet someone.’

When they hang up after some publishing gossip and exchanging recipes, Kun returns to the glass of Merlot that he’d left on the counter. Swirling the glass with a slack wrist, he takes a sip as he picks up one of the magazines from the table. Flipping it open, Kun only manages to skim a few lines before chuckling to himself at what he reads: 

**In conversation with Qian Kun about root vegetables and being free,**

_(...) We’re all familiar with the commercialised fast food sibling of the original brick-heavy recipe collection, with her chalky and yellow tinted pages, who used to have a welcome spot on the shelf of every kitchen. It may be an old fashioned sentiment, but the type of glossy food tabloids that line the walls of convenience stores and airport shops, oversaturated with more photos than text, simply do not have the same dogeared charm as the cookbooks passed down to us from our mothers and grandmothers._

_But as we enter Qian’s home on the day of our interview, there is an immediate sense of warmth and hospitality. The aisle in the open kitchen is large but simple, and by the door to the garden sits a crate of mangoes waiting to ripen in the summer breeze that tugs on the curtains._

_“I feed her all sorts of fruit,” says Qian about his five year old daughter. “Her taste buds are still developing. It’s a critical time for trying new things, and I want her to be able to experience everything.”_

_Therein lies the hopeful undercurrent of Qian’s whole cooking philosophy. This bright eyed perspective is also found between the lines of his debut cookbook, which is packed full of easy-to-follow recipes in between short personal stories about seafood and peeling fruit which leave me stunned and teary eyed, stomach growling. Like any good book, you are not entirely the same person when you set the it down as you were when you turned the first page. It’s as much of a cookbook as it is a novel about human connections, even when it doesn’t set out to do so. At heart, it’s humble, simple, but that’s why it works._

_Likewise, the decision to only use local high quality ingredients at his restaurant seems risky, but an admirable choice. “The foundation is everything. I’ve always believed in quality first and foremost, and in people. If you spend a little extra effort and care on your saffron, the dough will be happier, and the customer will be happier. People come back for that.”_

_He shows us around the kitchen and pantry - the shelves lined with conserved fruit and jars filled to the brim with plump sweetness, and ropes of colourful mushrooms hanged out to dry in the ceiling. Qian lets us taste a concoction of apple and blackberry jam (hand picked, of course), served with cream cheese on a warm slice of bread straight from the oven. It’s dark, earthy and velvety. It melts in my mouth, I melt with it, and I understand what he means._

_Cooking is, largely, sacrifice. From the harvest to the table, from the berry bush to the jam jar. Cut an apple into slices and you’ll savour it even more. “Time, investment, sacrifice, they all make food more enjoyable. And I think that goes for all other things in life,” says Qian._

_‘I have performed the necessary butchery,’ said Henry James to his editor about the final draft of his novel. And more literally, the same is true of any good meal. Though I cut my finger when I slice the veal, I set down the finished dish on my lover’s plate, exclaiming ‘Here is the bleeding corpse.’ Hence cooking may be all about sacrifice, but sacrifice feels religious if done right, and spiritual if shared._

_“I often recall the most important moments of my life in connection with some memory of taste,” begins Qian as he pauses with the bread knife in one hand. ”For example, being seven and tasting this rich, hot seafood stew my grandmother made late one evening. I remember the sway of the lightbulb above the dining table, and the blue bowl it was served in. It absolutely blew my mind. If I’m lucky, my recipes can elicit that same kind of reaction in other people.”_

_As we know today, psychology plays a big role in our relation to food. All those little things matter. It’s about intentionality. The serving plate matters, the place where you eat matters, what you’re feeling matters, what the cook was feeling, what the fish was feeling. Qian notes the importance of this, too._

_“Of course, I never thought about these things in a clinical way when I first learned to cook under my mother’s supervision. But I have always viewed food as something necessarily personal,” he says._

_Qian’s words ring true for me as well. While he moves around the kitchen to prepare the next dish, I pause to reminisce of my own childhood. A sudden memory of my mother serving me traditional salt-grilled fish comes to mind - quite unappetising to a child where it lied, all bony and grizzly and staring right back at me with a single glassy, unmoving eye. But then, the flavour! Crunchy salt grinding against my teeth, crispy skin, the meat tender and filling, and suddenly I am no longer sitting on a hard chair, but I am by the ocean with my father. He is teaching me how to tie a knot with the red fishing line, sturdy enough not to lose a big catch (Though I could never do it as well as him)._

_And so, a memory within a memory. That’s the power of food. That’s the power of sharing. (...)_  
. 

Ten saunters into the kitchen just then, twirling around the kitchen island and lifting the glass out of Kun’s hand for a sip.

‘Did you write this?’ asks Kun incredulously, looking back and forth between Ten and the magazine with furrowed brows. 

Ten hops up on the counter and lets his his legs dangle off the edge. ‘I may have pulled some strings,’ he smirks, pursing his lips. ‘Johnny was moody for a full month about me stealing his big story, but I think we’re fine now.’

Kun skims the text again, turning the pages. ‘But…the timeline changed. And the food?’

Ten pulls the magazine out of Kun’s stunned grip and leans forward to plant a kiss on his lips. ‘That’s my creative license, darling.’

On the very last summer day of the year, Kun stands on the veranda in the morning and decides that it’s finally time to pull through on that promise he’d set some months ago. It’s a tough job, turns out, peeling the old paint off in thick strips. The house is twenty years old, he remembers, but the densely packed layers upon layers of paint make it seem way older. It’s been repainted before, but obviously never renovated from the ground up. Ten and Cheng help scrape the dry flakes off the railing so that the new polish can go on, and it surrounds them in a wispy cloud of dust particles. 

Above their heads, the sun blazes on in a descending curve down the vast, blue sky as the hours pass. They take lemonade breaks to avoid any heatstroke, pausing to sit under the shade or read a book until they’re ready to go again. It’s a day’s job, but in the end the years are all scraped off - revealing the soft, murky wood panel underneath - and repainted the brightest white Kun could find in the shed. 

Standing by the kitchen window later that evening, Kun watches Ten and Cheng out in the garden. The dinner table has just been set and pleasant aromas drift through the air, but he takes a moment to step out on the veranda before he needs to call out to them. The autumn wind strokes his face with a gentle touch - cool and refreshing - as the heat of the day settles low above ground. 

By the linen hanged out to dry on laundry lines, Ten and Cheng sit on a quilt in the grass, some 50 feet away. Smiling from ear to ear, they speak in a hushed tone, but about what, Kun cannot imagine. He smiles while watching the two, unbeknownst to them. In the setting sun, Ten is cutting open a pomegranate for Cheng; slicing the thick rinds in quarters and revealing its fleshy insides. While he feeds her, some spills down his wrists and bounces onto the white quilt below, but whether or not it stains the fabric red, Kun doesn’t mind. 

Sighing contentedly, Kun traces his hand along the smooth texture of the wooden railing; feels the warmth against his fingertips, and knows that this is exactly where they’re meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> honestly, huge thanks if you even read this far! i wrote this entire story in 3 weeks in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation and being stoned, so i apologise for any and all inconsistencies. all comments are highly appreciated, however. what caught your eye?
> 
> in preparation for writing this story i read more poetry, sex diaries and recipes for love & good pasta than i can remember. i wish i could give a full reference list, because there’s so many pretty words out there by people more well spoken than me, but i hope something good and true within this story bled through. 
> 
> here’s what i would like to say, in brief: peel a tangerine for someone today.
> 
> **[twitter](https://twitter.com/tentwigs)** || **[curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/tentwigs)**


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